TIMING SYNCHRONIZATION AND CHANNEL ESTIMATION FOR THE DVB-T2 SYSTEM OVER SINGLE FREQUENCY NETWORKS

Abstract

KeyWords: synchronization; channel estimation; DVB-T2; echo channel; SFN Summary: DVB-T2 is the next-generation European terrestrial digital broadcasting standard that was published by the European Telecommunication Standard Institute (ETSI) based on orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM). The performance of OFDM systems is very sensitive to the frame (symbol) synchronization where a miss-detection of the symbol timing leads to severe inter-symbol interference (ISI) and inter-carrier interference (ICI) and cause performance degradation. In SFN environment, the channel impulse response spans over hundreds or even thousands of symbols. Moreover, the channel echoes may have the same power or greater than the direct path power. Therefore, the synchronization problem is one of the most challenges tasks in such environment. In additional, the channel frequency response (CFR) estimation complexity would be increased to support the comprehensive range of these channels delays.