A wireless digital television camera

A wireless television camera rises a radio link to send its pictures to the control gallery or scanner. Digital modulation offers the possibility of h igh reliability, perhaps enabling all cameras to be wireless. A prototype w ireless digital camera has been built at BBC R&D, based on the DVB-T standa rd. The prototype uses an MPEG-2 video encoder, provided by industry; a com pact COFDM modulator; and a digital transmitter, both designed at BBC R&D. initial trials have shown that very rugged operation carl be obtained with a simple omnidirectional transmit antenna and a fixed receive antenna, in s ituations where large amounts of multipath would make an analog system unus able. Outdoors, care must be taken to maintain line-of-sight operation.