In the world of live sports, a near real-time viewing experience is the pinnacle of first-rate video delivery. That’s why Haivision, Nokia, and German service provider Media Broadcast joined forces to demonstrate a comprehensive and flexible solution for mobile video delivery over 5G networks at SportsInnovation 2022.
The much-anticipated event took place in May at the Merkur Spiel-Arena in Düsseldorf, Germany, and showcased the Haivision Pro460 video transmitter which supported a video contribution from a professional Sony camcorder. Together, the solution captured and sent footage at ultra-low latency (200ms to be exact) to the official broadcasters’ OB vans over a Nokia 5G campus private wireless network to be edited and mixed.
There’s Power in Partnership
“We are excited to partner with Haivision and Media Broadcast to provide our leading-edge 5G campus private wireless network, enabling a robust, local network dedicated to specific geographical areas covering anywhere from a few hundred square meters indoors to a few square kilometers outdoors. Its usage is restricted to people or devices affiliated within that area, which adds additional security and control, and can be constrained further through the Nokia solution.” said Ronald Warnken, Channel Sales Leader Central Europe at Nokia.
Media Broadcast received approval from the German Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) to deploy a 5G network with a dedicated bandwidth of 100MHz (3.7GHz – 3.8GHz) at the Mekur Spiel-Arena specifically for SportsInnovation 2022. For coverage at the arena, two 5G antennas were deployed: one in the hospitality zone located within the business area as well as a 5W outdoor antenna for the field and fan galleries.
4K Video at Ultra-Low Latency
On-site crews were able to use Haivision Pro460 to reliably encode and transmit one 4K/UHD video feed — or four simultaneous HD streams — over the Nokia network at ultra-low latency, resulting in a near real-time live video broadcast.
How was this possible? By featuring six embedded 5G modems and leveraging the double-Emmy® award-winning Safe Stream Transport (SST) protocol, the Pro460 can simultaneously aggregate multiple 5G/4G/3G network connections to achieve the maximum bandwidth for a flawless, high-quality stream – and that’s exactly what happened at SportsInnovation 2022.
“Game-changing 5G private wireless technology enables network slicing with the ability to dedicate individual slices to different services such as video transmission or radio communication,” said Ronan Poullaouec, VP of Engineering, Remote and Wireless Systems, at Haivision. “At SportsInnovation, that 5G power – combined with the efficiency and flexibility of the Haivision Pro460 — enabled both broadcasters to securely transmit at 1Gbit per second, without having to worry about public network congestion.”
Housed in Media Broadcast’s 5G Blue Box — composed of two radio cell baseband units and the state-of-the-art Nokia 5G core network — Haivision’s StreamHub 1U rack server provided the reception, decoding, and distribution of all video feeds for the demonstration. End-to-end latency as low as 200ms was achieved between the Haivision bonded cellular transmitter and the broadcaster’s control room, making the mobile video delivery solution the ultimate tool for delivering a professional live production. Once the signal was received in the OB van, it was distributed to the arena production center for editing, closed captioning, and mixing via a fiber connection.
“The demonstration at SportsInnovation 2022 offers a blueprint for future TV productions,” said Daniel Wolbers, Project Manager, 5G Campus Networks, at Media Broadcast. “Whether used to complement a wired camera system, or as a completely wireless production, a 5G campus private wireless network — combined with a Haivision bonded cellular system — has set new standards in terms of performance, security, flexibility, mobility, and connectivity. Best of all, the entire solution is already commercially available. We thank Haivision, Nokia, and our other partners for teaming up with us on this project and are looking forward to more joint efforts in the coming months.”
