UK DVB-T transmission; the challenges and solutions to achieve launch

During 1996 the UK Government passed legislation which provided for the transmission of six DVB-T multiplexes to the majority of UK households, with service launch planned for 1998. Castle Transmission International subsequently won contracts to provide distribution and transmission services for four of those six multiplexes, one for the BBC and three for ONdigital. This paper summarises some of the challenges encountered and solutions developed to enable the successful roll-out of this ground-breaking network, initially employing 81 transmitting stations. A key design requirement for the network was the high availability of service to the consumer. The evolution of the system architecture from initial design proposals to final implementation are reviewed