The Terrestrial Transmission of Digital Television Signals (DVB-T)

Abstract

The particular characteristics of a terrestrial radio channel have already been explained in the previous chapter on OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex). They are mainly determined by multipath reception which leads to location- and frequency-selective fading. In DVB-T, i.e. in the terrestrial transmission of digital TV signals according to the Digital Video Broadcasting standard, it was decided that the most appropriate modulation method to cope with this problem would be OFDM, the principles of which are explained in the previous chapter. The Figure below shows a block diagram of the DVB-T modulator, consisting at its heart of the OFDM modulator with the IFFT block followed by the I/Q modulator which can be a digital or an analog type. The position of the I/Q modulator in the circuit can vary depending on how the DVB-T modulator is implemented in practice. The OFDM modulation is preceded by the channel coding, i.e. the error correction, which is exactly the same in DVB-T as in DVB-S satellite transmission.