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1, MARCH 2007
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I. INTRODUCTION
INGLE FREQUENCY networks (SFNs) are considered for
use in terrestrial Advanced Television Systems Committee
(ATSC) Digital Television (DTV) services because of the
performance improvement of DTV receivers which are able to
compensate for the long-time delay and high-level ghosts [1].
SFNs increase spectrum efficiency, and also provide high
Manuscript received August 2, 2006; revised September 30, 2006. This research was supported by ETRI (Telecommunications Research Institute) and
the MIC (Ministry of Information and Communication), Korea, under the ITRC
(Information Technology Research Center) support program supervised by the
IITA (Institute of Information Technology Assessment) (IITA-2006-(C10900603-0011)).
Y.-T. Lee is with the Electronics and Telecommunication Research Institute,
Daejeon 305350, Korea, and also with the Department of Electrical and
Electronic Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul 120-749, Korea (e-mail:
ytlee@etri.re.kr).
S. I. Park, H. M. Eum, J. H. Seo, H. M. Kim, and S. W. Kim are
with the Electronics and Telecommunication Research Institute, Daejeon
305350, Korea (e-mail: psi76@etri.re.kr; hmeum@etri.re.kr; jhseo@etri.re.kr;
hmkim@etri.re.kr; swkimm@etri.re.kr).
J. S. Seo is with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
Yonsei University, Seoul 120-749, Korea (e-mail: jsseo@yonsei.ac.kr).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TBC.2006.886453
Signal to Noise Ratios (SNR) in the service areas [2]. SFNs may
also trigger the mobile DTV service [3].
Recently, the ATSC approved A/110A standard Synchronization Standard for Distributed Transmission for constructing
SFNs with multiple transmitters and a Recommended Practice
A/111 Design of Synchronized Multiple Transmitter Networks for examining all types of transmitters such as Digital
On-Channel Repeaters (DOCRs) and Distributed transmitters
used in SFNs [4], [5].
Among the transmitters, the equalization Digital On-Channel
Repeater (EDOCR) has been proposed to overcome the limitations of conventional DOCRs such as the susceptibility to antenna feedback, limited output power, possibility of inadequate
adjacent channel rejection, no co-channel interference rejection,
no multipath interference rejection, and no noise reduction [6],
[7]. Since an EDOCR internally cleans up and regenerates the
8-level baseband signal, it requires the less antenna isolation
and provides a higher output power, a better spectrum shaping,
and a better output SNR than the conventional DOCRs. The
performance of EDOCR was confirmed through laboratory and
field tests [8], [9]. Although it has shown such advantages over
the conventional DOCRs through the following several laboratory and field test, any detailed guidelines for the design of an
EDOCR system has not been published yet.
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LEE et al.: DESIGNING EDOCR FOR SINGLE FREQUENCY NETWORK ATSC SYSTEM
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Fig. 4. VSB demodulation in frequency domain for the EDOCR. (a) IF down
converted signal, (b) baseband down converted signal, (c) baseband matched
filter, (d) matched filtered signal, (e) VSB demodulated signal (complex domain).
and a noise figure of 2.5 dB. The LNA should not introduce any
nonlinear distortion that can impact the EDOCR operation.
2) Down Converter: The down converter consists of a mixer,
a bandpass filter, an IF amplifier, and an AGC control block,
which are the same components as the ones in an IF conversion
DOCR. The down converter converts the desired RF signal to a
fixed IF band with sufficient signal level. The frequency of the
IF that involves a trade-off can be chosen by the designer. A
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Fig. 5. Symbol scatter plot of the matched-filtered signal obtained by a SRRC filter under the ideal channel. (a) The number of taps of matched filter: 481, (b) the
number of taps of matched filter: 121, (c) the number of taps of matched filter: 61, (d) the number of taps of matched filter: 31.
TABLE I
MATCHED-FILTER TAP NUMBER AND DELAY VS. OUTPUT SNR
LEE et al.: DESIGNING EDOCR FOR SINGLE FREQUENCY NETWORK ATSC SYSTEM
27
the equalizer output. To improve the performance, the trellis decoder (TD) may be a good candidate as a decision device [15].
When the TD is used for the decision device, the performance
gets better by increasing the trace back depth (TBD) of the TD
as shown in Fig. 7. However, increasing the TBD results in increasing the delay time which can be calculated by
(2)
where
is the TBD and 12 means the depth of trellis interleaver in ATSC system.
Fig. 7 shows that the Symbol Error Ratio (SER) performance
of the TD is better than that of the conventional slicer even
though the TBD length is 1. However, according to (2), 1 of
the TBD length does not cause any delay. Therefore, it is possible to increase the performance without increasing the delay
time by using the TD with the TBD of 1. The TD is called an
intelligent slicer, since the slicer is able to minimize the error
propagation in the DFE and correct the error data symbols of
the DFE output. The detailed performance analysis of the intelligent slicer is discussed in next section.
In order to minimize the error propagation, the DFE coefficients need to be updated. Several algorithms can be introduced
for updating the DFE coefficients. For example, the least-mean
square (LMS) and recursive-least square (RLS) algorithms were
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applied in the training mode and the stop-and-go (SAG) and decision directed (DD) were used during the data segment. Based
on the performance analysis of the algorithms as shown in [16],
the LMS algorithm in the training mode and the SAG algorithm in the blind mode were chosen because, in the case of the
EDOCR, the convergence speed is not an important factor but
the stable convergence is required even at low SNRs.
2) TxID Insertion: Transmitter Identification (TxID) technique is used to detect, diagnose and classify the operating
status of radio transmitters. Due to an ever-increasing number
of transmitters, the need for transmitter identification is becoming an urgent issue since it enables the broadcast authorities
and operators to identify the source of in-band interference.
With the introduction of DTV broadcasting service over SFNs,
this is of particular interest now. The transmitters, which share
a single broadcast channel, naturally interfere with one another
in some coverage overlapped areas. Unwanted strong multipath
distortion may be generated by neighboring transmitters in
an SFN. This multipath effect may cause serious convergence
problems for the adaptive equalizer in a DTV receiver where
strong echoes, especially pre-echo, exist. These problems
can be effectively mitigated by monitoring and adjusting each
transmitters timing to minimize the unwanted multipath effects
[17].
Since the equalization process regenerates a clean baseband
signal, TxID signal, which behaves as low level noise on the
signal, is simultaneously eliminated. An EDOCR system has the
capability of either re-inserting the original TxID signal from
the received signal which comes from the main transmitter or
inserting a new TxID signal to identify itself. In the first case, the
EDOCR operates like an IF or RF processing DOCR where the
main transmitter TxID is simply passed through. In the second
case, the EDOCR operates similarly to a distributed transmitter.
C. Synchronization Sub-System
Because the EDOCR demodulates an IF signal to a baseband
symbol and re-modulates the symbol to the IF signal without
LEE et al.: DESIGNING EDOCR FOR SINGLE FREQUENCY NETWORK ATSC SYSTEM
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Fig. 12. SRRC output SNR with varying the number of taps.
the EDOCR design, the method using the frequency offset information with respect to the received signal is adopted for reducing the implementation cost.
Synchronization processing in an EDOCR is composed of the
recovery processing as a part of demodulation operation and
the compensation processing as a part of re-modulation operation. Fig. 8 shows the block diagram of the synchronization
sub-system applied to the EDOCR.
The recovery processing contains the carrier recovery and
symbol timing recovery and the algorithms for the carrier recovery and symbol timing recovery are the same as the ones
used in legacy 8-VSB receivers [19], [20]. When the carrier
recovery is performed at the demodulator, frequency offset information by measuring the frequency differences between the
pilot carrier and the Numerically Controlled Oscillator (NCO)
can be obtained. Also, the timing recovery enables to extract
symbol clock from the received signal.
By sharing the compensated timing clock from Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) to Analog to Digital Converter (ADC)
and Digital to Analog Converter (DAC), the synchronized symbols between the received and the re-transmitted signal can be
obtained.
Also, by reflecting the frequency offset information which
comes from the carrier recovery to re-transmitted signal, the carrier frequency between the received and re-transmitted IF signals is the same and synchronized. As shown in Fig. 9, the offset
information from the carrier recovery is used directly for generating an offset compensated carrier at the re-modulator.
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Fig. 13. Symbol scatter plot of the demodulated VSB signal for the transmitted signal generated by the VSB filter. (a) SRRC filter with 521 taps (SNR = 42:3 )
dB, (b) ER filter with 141 taps without the pre-equalizer (SNR = 30:6 ) dB, (c) ER filter with 141 taps and the 101 tap pre-equalizer (reference tap: 20),
SNR = 41:5 dB, (d) ER filter with 141 taps and the 101 tap pre-equalizer (reference tap: 10), SNR = 33:7 dB.
The re-transmitted IF signal is up-converted to a re-transmitted RF signal by using the same local oscillator which is used
for down-converting the received RF signal to an IF signal. The
method of sharing the local oscillator is used for a conventional
IF processing DOCRs [21].
By using those methods, the EDOCR output signal can maintain frequency synchronization with the signal received from the
main transmitter. Although the phase of an EDOCR output may
not be equal to the phase of the received signal from the main
transmitter, this possibility will not cause much impact on the
signal reception. The phase noise of the pilot carrier output from
the EDOCR should be less than 104 dBc/Hz at 20 kHz offset
from the carrier frequency. This condition can be satisfied by
adjusting the loop filter bandwidth of the carrier and timing recovery block.
D. Re-Transmitting Sub-System
The re-transmitting sub-system includes the following elements: re-modulation & pre-equalization, up converter, High
Power Amplifier (HPA), and channel filter as shown in Fig. 10.
Because most of the delay time in an EDOCR comes from the
re-transmitting sub-system, especially the re-modulation & preequalization part, reduction of the time delay is very crucial in
design of the re-transmitting sub-system.
1) Re-Modulation & Pre-Equalization: In a conventional
8-VSB modulator, the VSB pulse shaping filter is made up of
an SRRC filter and the number of the filter taps is determined to
LEE et al.: DESIGNING EDOCR FOR SINGLE FREQUENCY NETWORK ATSC SYSTEM
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Fig. 15. Analysis of synchronization between the main transmitter and the EDOCR. (a) Spectrum of Main transmitter and EDOCR, (b) input spectrum for receiver
(synchronization case), (c) input spectrum for receiver (non-synchronization case).
satisfy the transmission spectrum mask such as the FCC emission mask. Fig. 11 shows the spectrum characteristic of the
SRRC filter with different number of taps. In order to meet the
FCC emission mask requirement, the number of taps should be
greater than 481 because transmitter emissions must be attenuated by no less than 47 dB below the average transmitted power
in the first 500 kHz from the authorized channel edge [22].
The sufficient number of the VSB filter taps guarantees the
high output SNR of the transmitter as shown in Fig. 12. However, the delay time caused by the VSB filter depends upon the
number of its taps. If the up-sampling rate for the VSB filtering
is 4, the SRRC filter requires more than 500 taps which cause
about 6 us delay time. The delay time can be calculated by (1). In
an EDOCR re-modulator, however, since delay time is critical,
an SRRC filter with such a large number of taps is prohibited.
To shorten the delay time caused by the VSB filter, a VSB
filter with a small number of taps is needed while maintaining
the spectrum mask and output SNR requirement. One of the solutions is using an Equi-ripple (ER) filter. The filter coefficients
are obtained based on the Parks-McClellan algorithm [23]. The
high stop band attenuation with relatively short filter taps can
be obtained. It has been demonstrated that, for VSB modulation, the windowing VSB filter with about 140 taps is adequate
to meet the FCC emission mask requirements [24].
The cost for reducing the delay time by using the ER filter
is a moderate reduction of the SNR of the re-transmitted signal
because the ER filter is not an ideal Nyquist pulse shaping filter.
Figs. (13a) and (b) show the SNR performance versus the VSB
filter type. Simulation results show that the SRRC filter with 521
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Fig. 16. The signal constellation performance of the proposed equalizer. (a) Proposed equalizer block diagram, (b) constellation of proposed equalizer input, (c)
constellation of original equalizer output, (d) constellation of intelligent slicer output.
TABLE II
THE SNR VALUE VS. POSITION OF THE REFERENCE TAP OF THE
PRE-EQUALIZER
Several areas of the EDOCR coverage are overlapped by signals from the main transmitter and the EDOCR as shown in
Fig. 15. In the overlapped area, the frequency synchronization
between the main transmitters signal and the EDOCRs signal
is critical for the reception performance of DTV receivers. If the
synchronization between them is not achieved, the main transmitters signal or the EDOCRs signal causes co-channel interference including Doppler shift in the legacy DTV receivers.
To analyze the synchronization performance of an EDOCR,
it was assumed that the signal from the main transmitter was fed
into an EDOCR and then it produced an exact replica of the main
transmitters signal in the same channel as shown in Fig. 15(a).
The signal from the EDOCR was assumed to be 10 dB greater
than the signal from the main transmitter in the overlapped area,
and the signals from both the EDOCR and the main transmitter
pass through only AWGN channel.
If the EDOCR signal is synchronized with the main transmitters signal, the situation can be represented as
(3)
where y(t) is the input signal of the consumer DTV receiver,
is the signal from the main transmitter,
LEE et al.: DESIGNING EDOCR FOR SINGLE FREQUENCY NETWORK ATSC SYSTEM
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Fig. 17. Brazil A channel profile and SER performance of the proposed equalizer. (a) Brazil A channel profile, (b) proposed equalizer performance in Brazil A
channel condition.
Fig. 18. The EDOCR final output signal spectrum and the quality. (a) EDOCR final output spectrum with 100 W, (b) eye diagram of EDOCR final output.
(4)
where
and
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Fig. 19. Antenna isolation performance of the EDOCR. (a) Received signal profile with feedback coupling, (b) MSE convergence of the proposed equalizer, (c)
SER performance of equalizer output with feedback coupling.
LEE et al.: DESIGNING EDOCR FOR SINGLE FREQUENCY NETWORK ATSC SYSTEM
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Fig. 20. Adjacent channel rejection performance of the EDOCR. (a) Main transmitters block (desired Transmitter is #2), (b) air interfacing modeling, (c) EDOCR
block diagram, (d) main transmitters signal spectrum, (e) EDOCR input signal spectrum, (f) EDOCR output signal spectrum.
TABLE III
TOTAL SYSTEM DELAY OF THE DESIGNED EDOCR
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Fig. 21. Examples of SFN implementations using the EDOCRs. (a) Regional SFN using EDOCRs, (b) complete SFN using EDOCRs, (c) complete SFN using
hybrid of distributed transmitters and EDOCRs.
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tion systems.