A Prototype VLSI Solution for Digital Terrestrial TV Receivers Conforming to the DVB-T Standard

This paper is aimed to give a thorough overview of the technical activities carried out within the DVBIRD Project (“Digital Video Broadcasting Integrated Receiver Decoder”). The project results achieved in the design of the digital front-end stage of a receiver conforming to the new “DVB-T” European standard for over-the-air TV broadcasting are highlighted. This DVB-T standard is based on the COFDM (Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) technique and is the result of the technical efforts dedicated to the definition of a digital terrestrial television system in the past years in Europe. An optimised channel decoder architecture, taking advantage of the most recent VLSI technologies in order to achieve a cost-effective solution for the receiver (or Set-Top Box), is proposed. This work is carried out to encourage an early introduction of a digital terrestrial television service in Europe, expected by the beginning of 1998, while the demonstrator is planned for extensive field trials in the second half of 1997. This four-chip prototyping is based on the state-of-the-art CMOS 0.5 μm, 3.3 V, 3-metal-layers VLSI technology. Moreover, a co-operative methodology has been implemented to validate the silicon and the demonstrator.

Published

1996-10

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/M001262

ISBN

978-1-61482-947-8