Helping Hand.

The French government is providing funds to help jump-start a satellite-based European digital mobile radio/TV service.

The proposed S-band service is one of six projects chosen late last month to benefit from funding offered by France's new agency for industrial innovation (AII), created a year ago to support high-technology endeavors. AII agreed to allocate 38 million euros ($47 million) toward the 98-million-euro project, which aims to validate the basic system architecture and terrestrial technologies needed to offer a hybrid mobile service for automobile radio and cell phone users.

The funds â€" to be made available over a four-year period, subject to European Commission approval â€" include 17 million euros in grants and 21 million euros in reimbursable loans. An industrial team headed by Alcatel Alenia Space will supply the remainder. Alcatel Alenia recently created a dedicated subsidiary, Alcatel Mobile Broadcast, to pursue hybrid mobile projects.

DEVELOPMENT OF basic technologies for the space segment has already started with the help of French space agency CNES under a 33-million-euro, five-year package of demonstration projects to help sustain critical engineering know-how and ensure European industrial competitiveness (AW&ST Jan. 2, p. 56).

CNES's director of strategy, Stephane Janichewski, says the agency has earmarked 7 million euros for engineering support and design of critical components such as the antenna and transponder/processor payload. Preliminary definition has already been completed, and detailed definition is expected to be finished by June.

This month, CNES and Alcatel will undertake demonstration trials of the system in Toulouse using terrestrial hardware provided by cell phone operator Orange. The tests are intended to validate the concept and convince terrestrial operators, broadcasters, content providers and other users to help fund an operational system. The goal is to have terrestrial broadcasting infrastructure in operation by late 2007 and a full hybrid service in place by early 2009, says Alcatel Mobile Broadcast manager Oliver Coste.

The concept proposed is similar to MBSAT, a service launched last year in South Korea and Japan using a dedicated broadband satellite (AW&ST Feb. 6, p. 54). Like MBSAT and the audio-only Sirius and XM Radio networks in the U.S. (for which Alcatel provided satellite payloads and systems), the European service would utilize a hybrid architecture using satellites and an ancillary terrestrial component (ATC). ATC towers boost signals in dense urban environments, minimizing signal fade and interference.

However, instead of the SDM-B standard used in MBSAT, the Alcatel system would be based on DVB-H, a new standard drawing on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing coding. OFDM permits seamless handoff between space and ground components and a power output compatible with cell phone requirements, Coste says, but without the interference issues that have affected MBSAT.

And in place of the 2.6-GHz. band of MBSAT, the Alcatel system will operate in the 2.2-GHz. band â€" adjacent to that provided for third-generation UMTS cell phone service â€" allowing maximum use of existing ground infrastructure to minimize investment requirements. A European hybrid mobile video network would need thousands of ATC towers â€" an order of magnitude more than an audio system. Initially, the service could provide 10 TV channels on a national basis and up to three times that in urban areas, where most terrestrial repeaters are located.

Coste says a decision on whether to roll out the service in one go or on a step-by-step basis â€" starting first with radio and adding on TV later, as in the U.S. â€" will depend on ongoing discussions with terrestrial and satellite operators. The leading contender to supply the space segment appears to be Eutelsat. The satellite operator is mulling an S-band payload on its new W2A spacecraft, to be ordered later this year for deployment in early 2009. However, Alcatel is also talking with other operators. One is thought to be WorldSpace, for which Alcatel also supplied the payload. Alcatel notes that its technology would be suitable for the Indian and Chinese markets, which WorldSpace is also targeting.

Whether the European Commission will approve the AII's public funding scheme is another unknown. AII Director Jean-Louis Beffa said he hoped to land an OK within "a few months." But the EC may look askance at the amounts offered in grants and reimbursable loans â€" a sensitive issue in the context of the ongoing aerospace trade dispute with the U.S. currently before the World Trade Organization. The EC may also wonder why the French government is becoming involved in a business where the private sector has already stepped in successfully elsewhere.

The Alcatel team hopes that a complementary hybrid technology research project, to be submitted shortly for the EC's Eureka R&D program, in cooperation with Nokia and other non-French partners, will help defuse one possible criticism â€" the lack of involvement by other European nations. The project is earmarked for the Celtic research cluster program set aside within Eureka for information technologies.

DIAGRAM: Schematic shows how a future European hybrid satellite system might work. The Alcatel proposal would make maximum use of existing ground infrastructure.

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By Michael A. Taverna, Paris