Systems for reducing adverse effects of deep fades in DTV signals designed for mobile reception
DCFirst Claim
1. In transmitter apparatus for a digital television broadcast signal manifested as an electromagnetic wave subjected to vestigial sideband amplitude modulation in accordance with an eight-level modulating signal, said eight-level modulating signal formed by two-thirds trellis coding of convolutionally byte-interleaved 207-byte Reed-Solomon codewords generated from 187-byte packets beginning with respective 3-byte headers and concluding with respective 184-byte contents, the improvement wherein:
- the contents of special ones of said 187-byte packets encapsulate respective segments of byte-interleaved parallel concatenated convolutional codewords;
the headers of said special ones of said 187-byte packets indicate their special nature;
said parallel concatenated convolutional codewords encode Reed-Solomon-coded ancillary data, time-division multiplexing bytes of said Reed-Solomon-coded ancillary data with bytes of a first parity determination and with bytes of a second parity determination; and
the byte interleaving of said parallel concatenated convolutional codewords disposes the bytes of each of them transversally within the contents of said special ones of said 187-byte packets.
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Abstract
Digital television broadcasting signals employ parallel concatenated convolutional coding, commonly called “turbo coding”, to improve reception by receivers in motor vehicles. Turbo coded Reed-Solomon codewords are transversally disposed in the payload fields of encapsulating MPEG-2-compliant packets to improve the capability of the Reed-Solomon coding to overcome deep fades. Turbo codewords are transmitted more than once in so-called “staggercasting”. Reception of DTV signals is improved by combining soft decisions concerning repeated transmissions of turbo codewords before turbo decoding. Only the data components of turbo codewords are transmitted twice in “punctured” staggercasting of turbo codewords, with parity components being transmitted only once, so code rate is reduced by a smaller factor than two.
10 Citations
19 Claims
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1. In transmitter apparatus for a digital television broadcast signal manifested as an electromagnetic wave subjected to vestigial sideband amplitude modulation in accordance with an eight-level modulating signal, said eight-level modulating signal formed by two-thirds trellis coding of convolutionally byte-interleaved 207-byte Reed-Solomon codewords generated from 187-byte packets beginning with respective 3-byte headers and concluding with respective 184-byte contents, the improvement wherein:
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the contents of special ones of said 187-byte packets encapsulate respective segments of byte-interleaved parallel concatenated convolutional codewords; the headers of said special ones of said 187-byte packets indicate their special nature; said parallel concatenated convolutional codewords encode Reed-Solomon-coded ancillary data, time-division multiplexing bytes of said Reed-Solomon-coded ancillary data with bytes of a first parity determination and with bytes of a second parity determination; and the byte interleaving of said parallel concatenated convolutional codewords disposes the bytes of each of them transversally within the contents of said special ones of said 187-byte packets. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5)
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6. Receiver apparatus for receiving a digital television broadcast signal manifested as an electromagnetic wave subjected to vestigial sideband amplitude modulation in accordance with an eight-level modulating signal, said eight-level modulating signal formed by two-thirds trellis coding of convolutionally byte-interleaved 207-byte Reed-Solomon codewords generated from 187-byte packets beginning with respective 3-byte headers and concluding with respective 184-byte contents, the contents of special ones of said 187-byte packets encapsulating respective segments of parallel concatenated convolutional codewords at least some of which are byte-interleaved , the headers of said special ones of said 187-byte packets indicating their special nature, said parallel concatenated convolutional codewords encoding Reed-Solomon-coded ancillary data, bytes of said Reed-Solomon-coded ancillary data being time-division multiplexed with bytes of a first parity determination and with bytes of a second parity determination, and the byte interleaving of said parallel concatenated convolutional codewords disposing the bytes of each of them transversally within the contents of said special ones of said 187-byte packets, said receiver apparatus comprising:
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apparatus for converting the received improved digital television broadcast signal to a digitized baseband signal; a decoder for two-thirds trellis coding, connected for receiving said digitized baseband signal and generating soft decisions concerning the symbols encoded therein, which are descriptive of said convolutionally byte-interleaved 207-byte Reed-Solomon codewords; an inner byte de-interleaver connected for de-interleaving said soft decisions concerning said symbols in said baseband digital television signal that are descriptive of said convolutionally byte-interleaved 207-byte Reed-Solomon codewords; an inner Reed-Solomon decoder for (207,
187) Reed-Solomon forward-error-correction coding connected for receiving de-interleaved soft decisions concerning said symbols that are descriptive of 207-byte Reed-Solomon codewords and correcting byte errors in the 187-byte packets contained within respective ones of said 207-byte Reed-Solomon codewords, thereby to generate soft decisions concerning those said 187-byte packets;a data de-randomizer connected for de-randomizing hard decision portions of said soft decisions concerning those said 187-byte packets generated by said inner Reed-Solomon decoder, said de-randomizing being done by exclusive-ORing the bits of said hard decision portions with the bits of a prescribed pseudo-random binary sequence, thereby to generate de-randomized 187-byte packets; a turbo coding selector connected for selecting interleaved bytes of said parallel concatenated convolutional codewords from those of said de-randomized 187-byte packets that begin with respective 3-byte headers indicative of their said special nature, which interleaved bytes are accompanied by soft-decision information and continue to be so accompanied in the selective response of the turbo coding selector; an outer byte de-interleaver connected for de-interleaving said selective response of said turbo coding selector including the soft-decision information therein and reproducing said parallel concatenated convolutional codewords; a turbo decoder connected for receiving said parallel concatenated convolutional codewords reproduced by said outer byte de-interleaver and decoding them to reproduce said Reed-Solomon-coded ancillary data; and
outer Reed-Solomon decoding apparatus connected for receiving said Reed-Solomon-coded ancillary data and correcting byte errors in the packets of ancillary data contained within said Reed-Solomon-coded ancillary data. - View Dependent Claims (7, 8, 9)
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10. Receiver apparatus for receiving a digital television broadcast signal manifested as an electromagnetic wave subjected to vestigial sideband amplitude modulation in accordance with an eight-level modulating signal, said eight-level modulating signal formed by two-thirds trellis coding of convolutionally byte-interleaved 207-byte Reed-Solomon codewords generated from 187-byte packets, the contents of special ones of said 187-byte packets encapsulating respective segments of parallel concatenated convolutional codewords at least some of which are byte-interleaved, the headers of said special ones of said 187-byte packets indicating their special nature, said parallel concatenated convolutional codewords encoding Reed-Solomon-coded ancillary data, bytes of said Reed-Solomon-coded ancillary data being time-division multiplexed with bytes of a first parity determination and with bytes of a second parity determination, and the byte interleaving of said parallel concatenated convolutional codewords disposing the bytes of each of them transversally within the contents of said special ones of said 187-byte packets, said receiver apparatus comprising:
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apparatus for converting a selected 8VSB digital television signal received as an amplitude-modulated radio-frequency carrier to a baseband digital television signal, which apparatus includes front-end circuitry, an analog-to-digital converter, a demodulator for 8VSB digital television signals and a channel equalization filter; a 12-phase trellis decoder connected for providing trellis decoding results that include soft decisions concerning symbols in said baseband digital television signal, said 12-phase trellis decoder connected to receive baseband digital television signal from said apparatus for converting a selected 8VSB digital television signal received as an amplitude-modulated radio-frequency carrier to a baseband digital television signal; and further apparatus connected for decoding selected portions of said trellis decoding results conveying said parallel concatenated convolutional codewords that encode said ancillary data, thus to reproduce said ancillary data in at least substantially original form. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
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17. Receiver apparatus for receiving 8-VSB digital television broadcast signals each manifested as an electromagnetic wave subjected to vestigial sideband amplitude modulation in accordance with an eight-level modulating signal, said eight-level modulating signal formed by two-thirds trellis coding of 207-byte Reed-Solomon codewords generated from 187-byte packets and convolutionally byte-interleaved before said two-thirds trellis coding, the contents of special ones of said 187-byte packets each encapsulating data bits and parity bits of parallel concatenated convolutional coding of ancillary data, the headers of said special ones of said 187-byte packets indicative of their special nature, said parallel concatenated convolutional coding encoding ancillary data, said receiver apparatus comprising:
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apparatus for converting a selected 8VSB digital television signal received as an amplitude-modulated radio-frequency carrier to a baseband digital television signal, which apparatus includes front-end circuitry, an analog-to-digital converter, a demodulator for 8VSB digital television signals and a channel equalization filter; a 12-phase trellis decoder connected for providing trellis decoding results that include soft decisions concerning symbols in said baseband digital television signal, said 12-phase trellis decoder connected to receive baseband digital television signal from said apparatus for converting a selected 8VSB digital television signal received as an amplitude-modulated radio-frequency carrier to a baseband digital television signal; and further apparatus connected for decoding selected portions of said trellis decoding results conveying said parallel concatenated convolutional coding that encodes said ancillary data, thus to reproduce said ancillary data in at least substantially its original form. - View Dependent Claims (18, 19)
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Specification