Rudolf Urtel Prize for Communications Engineer

Dr. Lucca Richter surrounded by Sonja Langhans (2nd Chairwoman of the FKTG), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rainer Schäfer (Chairman) and retired Prof. Dr. Ulrich Reimers. Photo credit: FKTG

Dr. Lucca Richter was awarded the Rudolf Urtel Prize 2023 for his dissertation at the FKTG – Gesellschaft für Elektronische Medien conference. He completed his doctorate at the Institute for Communications Technology at Technische Universität Braunschweig. The Rudolf Urtel Prize honours outstanding achievements by young engineers in the fields of television, film and electronic media.

Dr. Lucca Richter’s dissertation, supervised by Professor Ulrich Reimers, focused on adding a broadcast component to mobile communications standards. This makes it possible to deliver content not only in the comparatively small cells of traditional mobile phone networks, but also over large areas via powerful transmitters. The aim of his work was to find out how popular content, especially live broadcasts such as Bundesliga football matches, can be transmitted to thousands of users from a single transmission tower, rather than being transmitted thousands of times as individual data streams in hundreds of mobile phone cells. Crucially, this transmission will no longer take place on (DVB) receivers as with traditional broadcasting, but on smartphones and tablet PCs, and is therefore embedded in the mobile communications standards. In his dissertation, “A 5G New Radio Terrestrial Broadcast System”, he presents an evolution of the current 5G mobile standard to include a broadcast layer.

By designing, implementing and testing a field trial in Braunschweig, he has laid one of the foundations for possible standardisation.