Spectral Efficiency Evaluation of an NR-Based 5G Terrestrial Broadcast System for Fixed Reception

LTE-based 5G terrestrial broadcasting, standardized in 3GPP Release 16, allows broadcasters to reach cellular devices. In this paper, toward the development of a future terrestrial broadcast system in Release 18 or later called 5G-Advanced, a specification for New Radio (NR) based 5G terrestrial broadcasting is presented for a 6 MHz-channel raster, which is used in current digital terrestrial television broadcasting. The transmission performance is evaluated in physical layer simulations. In particular, the spectral efficiency is evaluated and compared with a second-generation DTTB system at a required carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR) of 20 dB in a fixed-reception scenario with a rooftop receiving antenna. The evaluation in an additive white Gaussian noise channel indicates that the spectral efficiency of NR-based 5G terrestrial broadcasting can be improved by 0.83 (bps/Hz) by enhancing the code length of low density parity check code, the carrier modulation scheme, guard band ratio, and cyclic prefix ratio from what available so far in Release 16. Furthermore, when frequency interleaving is incorporated, the spectral efficiency is increased by 0.75 (bps/Hz) in a short echo channel with a desired-to-undesired signal power ratio of 0 dB. The introduction of time interleaving increases spectral efficiency by 0.97 (bps/Hz) in an impulsive interference channel with a carrier-to-interference signal power ratio of −20 dB. For each interleaving, the increase in spectral efficiency tends to be higher as the required CNR increases.