DSP based OFDM demodulator and equalizer for professional DVB-T receivers

Abstract

This work treats the design of base-band processing subsystems for professional DVB-T receivers using 1600 MIPS, fixed point DSPs. We show the results about the implementation of OFDM demodulation, channel estimation and equalization functional blocks, for the 2k/8k modes. The adoption of general purpose DSPs provides a great flexibility in the development of different configurations of the receiver. Furthermore it enables the feasibility of adaptive equalization schemes, where the quality of the channel estimation varies according to both channel characteristics and speed of the channel variations. The 16/32 bit fixed point architecture leads to a very low implementation loss, and a careful optimization of the pipeline architecture of the processor allows the receiver to obtain short processing delays. The flexibility of the software approach along with the obtained performance make the proposed implementation very interesting in professional and high-end receivers for interactive, multimedia applications of DVB-T.