Intel engineers are learning how to get DTV broadcasts to moving ...

at the end of 2006. Nomadic use already is being handled with ATSC in N. America and with DVB-T in all but the 3 E. Asian nations, Manny Pitta, a mgr. in the company’s mobile platforms group, told the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco Wed. ATSC, despite previous doubts, could serve the nomad market, meaning stationary TV reception away from home or office, he said. China, Japan and S. Korea each have unique standards. The problem of Doppler shift, a result of receiver motion, prevents mobile reception of HD and restricts it to nomadic use, said Ernest Tsui, principal engineer-wireless communications architecture. HD can be received at up to 10 mph only, SD up to 50 and low-resolution broadcasts at up to 100, he said. Two antennas are best for optimizing reception, Tsui said. Tests while driving in the San Francisco area showed a single antenna provides a 68.3% chance of successful reception, but 2 provide 85.9%, he said. “After that there was a point of diminishing returns and complexity,” Tsui said: “Multiband compact antennas with good gain are called for.” Fortunately, a notebook can hold the required components, he said. Antennas should be as far as possible from each other -- or polarized -- and from other transmitters, which can offer interference. Intel is developing high-gain, high-bandwidth monopole antennas for that, Tsui said. He told developers antennas should provide more than 4 dB gain, fit into a notebook lid and be low-cost. Network infrastructure is important, too, he said. To avoid frame freezes, coverage should be 95%, well above the FCC recommendation of 50%, he said. Networks should be single- frequency, he said: “They fortunately are being built as we speak.”