Design and Development of a Future Digital TV-Antenna

Sammanfattning: Television broadcasting can be performed through different methods and technologies. One broadcast technology in Sweden and Denmark is called Digital Terrestrial Network (DTT) and is operated by Teracom Boxer Group, a state owned company. In order to watch television through DTT, households require a TV-antenna in order to receive signals broadcasted from transmitting masts. The broadcasting process operates through a main base station that sends terrestrial signals to smaller transmitting masts, distributed across the country to reach all receiver antennas. Today’s TV-antennas are regarded as something necessary evil, since it is costly, often need professional installation and is affected by various weather conditions and objects passing by. In addition, it does not have an appealing design that smoothly integrates the antenna into the surrounding environment. The purpose with this master thesis is to develop a new concept for a future digital TV-antenna, in order to keep and attract new customers to DTT. This is done by having a more modern and attractive design and an integrated additional value. The project was performed with an iterative product development process, comprising five phases with different methods suitable for each phase. Background and research included quantitative and qualitative methods in form of interviews, survey and literature review, in order to create a specification of requirements. Based on the result from the initial phase concepts were developed and specified. The final concept was chosen with help of evaluation methods and through discussions with supervisors. The majority of the time was spent to obtain knowledge regarding theory behind antenna design, generate innovative concepts and create visual prototypes by 3D modeling. The new TV-antenna resulted in an integration of a 4G-antenna, an improved mechanical design to facilitate installation process, a new roof ridge attachment to increase the range of antenna placements and a modern appearance to attract new customers.