With the ongoing push to adopt digital television (DTV), most of the emphasis has been placed on High Definition Television (HDTV) because of the obvious advantages it provides. HDTV is a technology that is capable of producing incredibly sharp and clear pictures that can be displayed on big screens without sacrificing image quality.

However, while HDTV is the most obvious benefit of DTV, there are many other “behind the scene” benefits that are equally important, and can be exploited by using innovative technologies. One such technology is Distributed-Transmission Systems (DTS).

As its name suggests, DTS is simply a way to distribute the TV signal across a service area. Instead of using a single central high-power high-tower transmitter, DTS uses a number of lower power transmitters located at different sites within the service area. This technique has not been used with analog TV because of the risk of creating ghost images on the user’s channels. An analog transmission system must use a different frequency channel for each different transmitter used to distribute the signal. Digital transmission systems, on the other hand, do not have this requirement.

Because of this, the limited and valuable spectrum used by TV signals can be conserved using DTV. In fact, under certain conditions it may even be possible to use a single channel for all the transmitters of a digital DTS to form the so-called Single Frequency Network (SFN). As well, DTS provides additional benefits such as better reception, reduced power and antenna height, more consistent reception across the entire service area and the ability to open up spectrum for new applications, such as interactive TV, multimedia broadcasting, or any other future applications in the TV bands.

CRC has performed various studies and tests on this technology and so far, the results have been encouraging. The test results, which have shown superior performance of DTS over the single transmitter configuration, have been used to standardize this technology for use in North America.