Design and development of a terrestrial digital video broadcast demodulation core: An international collaborative effort

The terrestrial digital video broadcast (DVB-T) system, specified in the ETSI 300–744 standard, is currently the most popular digital television system with more than 120 million receivers deployed globally in integrated television sets, set-top boxes, in-car modules, universal serial bus (USB) sticks, and personal computer (PC) cards. A provider of multimedia application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) in Asia required a DVB-T demodulation core as part of its strategy to broaden its stake in this growing market. To meet this challenge, Bell Labs partnered with Cambridge Industries Group, China, to form an international team to design and implement the underlying multimode orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)–based receiver. This paper presents insight into the essential elements of the system design, the design methodology, and project management and describes the underlying signal processing algorithms, the bit accurate model, and register transfer level code. It is demonstrated how close collaboration between Bell Labs and selected global partners can yield added value to Alcatel-Lucent. © 2007 Alcatel-Lucent.