Development and Implementation of an Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting-Terrestrial (ISDB-T) Decoder Using GNU Radio and USRP1
Authors: Alberto S. Bañacia, Joseph C. Acebedo, Johari C. Villegas, and Arvin Tate N. Yu
Abstract
The recent adoption by the Philippine government of Japan’s Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting- Terrestrial (ISDB-T) standard as the digital TV standard to be used in the country prompts the need for a platform that will facilitate understanding of its concept and provide a framework for evaluating algorithms that will improve ISDB-T receiver’s performance. This research work develops and implements an ISDB-T decoder in a Software-Defined Radio (SDR) platform. First, a recorded raw baseband ISDB-T signal in .dat file format was simulated through the configuration of signal processing blocks in GNU Radio Companion (GRC). The successful simulation produced a transport stream H264-MPEG-4 AVC file and resulted to the display of the signal in a 6MHz bandwidth with a 64QAM constellation plot, a 34.22 dB Modulation Error Rate (MER), 8.95 dB and 18.00 dB Bit Error Rate (BER) for the Viterbi and Reed Solomon decoders, respectively. The simulation measurements served as indicators for the quality of the decoded signal as the output transport stream file was played simultaneously in VLC media player. Second, an actual reception of a private Philippine ABS-CBN Digital Television Terrestrial (DTT) signal located in UHF Channel 43 was performed in real-time through the system integration of the USRP1 with the GRC Signal flow graph. A Log Periodic LP0410 PCB antenna was also integrated to the SDR platform to receive the digital broadcast. Due to proprietary DTV issues, the system was only able to display ABS-CBN’s frequency spectrum centered at its assigned frequency of 611.143MHz at a 6MHz bandwidth.