Next Generation Broadcast System and Method

A method for operating a user equipment device to facilitate the transfer of a data file to the user equipment, the method comprising:

• receiving a noise-perturbed version of an RF signal that is wirelessly transmitted by a broadcast transmission system, wherein the broadcast transmission system transmits segments of a data file in the RF signal;
• operating on the noise-perturbed version to recover estimates of the segments;
• analyzing the estimates to determine which of the segments are not successfully received;
• transmitting one or more missing segment indications to a server via an IP network, wherein each of the missing segment indications identifies a corresponding one of the segments that has not been successfully received.

A gateway for applying channel encoding with dynamically-variable coding rate to one or more data streams to be transmitted by a broadcast transmission system, wherein at least one of the one or more data streams is a variable rate stream, wherein the broadcast transmission system is configured to transmit data with a constant physical transport rate, the gateway comprising:

• a channel encoding unit configured to applying channel coding with fixed coding rate to the one or more data streams to obtain respectively one or more coded streams;
• a rate matching unit (RMU) configured to modify the one or more coded streams in order to obtain one or more respective modified streams, wherein the RMU is configured to modify the one or more coded streams by injecting null values into the one or more coded streams and/or by puncturing selected values of the one or more coded streams;
• a control unit configured to:
• receive information indicating a number of information bits per unit time in each of the one or more data streams;
• and
• vary the number of injected null values per unit time and/or the number of punctured values per unit time so that an aggregate bitrate of the one or more modified streams matches the constant physical transport rate, wherein said varying is performed based on the one or more numbers of information bits per unit time in the one or more respective data streams.