Design of 8K Broadcasting System based on MMT over Heterogeneous Networks

This paper presents the design of a broadcasting scenario and system for an 8K-resolution content. Due to an 8K content is four times larger than the 4K content in terms of size, many technologies such as content acquisition, video coding, and transmission are required to deal with it. Therefore, high-quality video and audio for 8K (ultra-high definition television) service is not possible to be transmitted only using the current terrestrial broadcasting system. The proposed broadcasting system divides the 8K content into four 4K contents by area, and each area is hierarchically encoded by Scalable High-efficiency Video Coding (SHVC) into three layers: L0, L1, and L2. Every part of the 8K video content divided into areas and hierarchy is independently treated. These parts are transmitted over heterogeneous networks such as digital broadcasting and broadband networks after going through several processes of generating signal messages, encapsulation, and packetization based on MPEG media transport. We propose three methods of generating streams at the sending entity to merge the divided streams into the original content at the receiving entity. First, we design the composition information, which defines the presentation structure for displays. Second, a descriptor for content synchronization is included in the signal message. Finally, we define the rules for generating “packet_id” among the packet header fields and design the transmission scheduler to acquire the divided streams quickly. We implement the 8K broadcasting system by adapting the proposed methods and show that the 8K-resolution contents are stably received and serviced with a low delay.