An Interactive Service Platform Solution Based On Enhanced Data Carousel Scheme

The interactive service platform (ISP) provides a whole solution for interactive digital TV (DTV) from front-end to back-end. The ISP mainly consists of a data broadcast system (DBS) in front-end and an application execution system (AES) in back-end. In interactive DTV domain, interactivity is obtained through interactive applications that can be transmitted in broadcast networks by means of a specified carousel scheme. Since additional DSM-CC messages are used to encapsulate applications, the carousel scheme introduces redundant information that leads to bandwidth redundancy in ISP. This paper presents a whole solution for interactive service platform in interactive DTV domain. The architectures of the DBS and AES and their functional elements are introduced respectively. As the basis of interactive application transmission, the enhanced data carousel(EDC) scheme derived from DVB data carousel is described in detail. Compared to DVB object carousel scheme, the EDC scheme introduces less redundant information, shows a better performance in bandwidth redundancy and presents to be more compact. Optimization strategies applying to broadcast application execution environment based on EDC scheme in AES are also presented. The proposed platform has been implemented and the experimental result shows a good performance.