Design And Implementation Of MPEG-2 Transport Stream Multiplexer

There a three digital television transmission standards: ATSC (US), DVB (Europe), and ISDB (Japan). Digital television can be transmitted by various media, namely, satellite, cable, or terrestrial broadcast. Regardless of the national standard followed or method of transmission used, digital television systems always use transport stream multiplexers based on MPEG-2.Today, on one hand the costs for traditional hardware multiplexers are still high and their portability rather limited, on the other hand, computer processing speed has increased considerably with the introduction of multi-core systems; thus, wholly software-based multiplexer solutions became feasible. The MPEG-2 standard defines a transport stream, which transmits elementary streams and program specific information (PSI). This transport stream can be divided into various sections without negatively influencing the transported program. This characteristic enables the feasibility and flexibility of software-based multiplexers.This paper will first introduce the interrelated concepts of digital television and its development in various countries, as well as present the technological background and significance of this paper. Next, the MPEG standard and various digital television standards (ATSC, DVB, ISDB) are introduced. In continuation, the MPEG-2 transport stream structure is analysed in detail. Then, after a detailed study of key technologies on how to combine several single program transport streams (SPTS) into one multiple program transport stream (MPTS), the author proposes three core algorithms. These algorithms allow, firstly, to acquire PSI, secondly, to remap PSI and PID, and thirdly, to correct the program clock reference (PCR). Furthermore, a core data structure for the implementation of the algorithms is presented. Finally, the author employs his algorithms to create a software-based multiplexer and combines 6 SPTS into one MPTS. After testing and analysing this multiplexer the research is briefly summarized and potential for further research is evaluated.The results show that software-based multiplexer is feasible and the software combines 6 SPTS into 1 MPTS correctly. The binary bit-stream conforms with MPEG-2, and the package identifiers are different to each other.