Chapter - 2 Literature Review and Theoretical Background
2.1 Literature Survey
This section surveys previous work in FM radio coverage and DAB. There have
been several works done on the area FM broadcast coverage and interference as
well as Digital Audio Broadcast Plan. Some of the recently published articles
related to this work are reviewed as follows.
2.1.1 Literature Review of Different Authors
1) Analysis of signal interferences between nearby radio stations in Nigeria
By Kamalu U.A., Anyakora N.N,
In this work, an analysis of signal interferences in radio broadcasting in Nigeria is
presented. It identifies the existence of interferences between any two or more
nearby radio stations. It also identifies the level, the causes and effects of such
interferences. These were achieved by conducting both computer simulations
(using existing ITU mathematical models) and field experiments to determine
certain inherent factors, such as: the minimum field strength, transmit frequency,
and area of coverage of a selected number of Radio stations.
Field experiments were carried out to determine minimum field strength in some
selected frequency modulated (FM) stations. The coverage distance of each radio
station was also established. The obtained result from the experiment was
substituted into mathematical model for inference assessment to verify whether
interference actually existed.
2) The influence of adjacent channel interference on FM communication
system
By Zhao Bo Quan Houde Zhao Huiqiang
Assembling many radio stations in a same vehicle or networking of radios is likely
to induce serious self-interference, such as adjacent channel, co-channel and
intermodulation interference. Here the authors mainly investigated the adjacent
channel interference (ACI) of FM signal. In order to deeply analyze the influence
of ACI and White Gaussian noise on FM communication system, a new Hilbert
demodulation method of software radio is introduced, and its realization method is
deduced in detail. Accordingly, ACI model of FM communication system is
established, and the influence of ACI interference is estimated through calculating
the distortion of the speech signal demodulated. Finally, some useful conclusions
are obtained through comparing the demodulation results of the new Hilbert
demodulation and the traditional amplitude frequency discriminator (AFD).
3) Improvement in broadcasting coverage by installation characteristics
Noncompliance of FM stations in São Paulo
By Paulo Eduardo dos Reis Cardoso, Yuzo Iano, Julio León,
In the thesis, the assessment of 16 FM stations cover-age held in the metropolitan
region of São Paulo, pointing methodologies for prediction and measurement
adopted by Anatel, analyzing the coverage gaps and showing, by simulations, the
variations that the installation and operation features can causing to the coverage of
a station, directly linked to the quality of service. The installation can be adjusted
in order to compensate the attenuation caused by the terrain, so that it can
contribute to the improvement in performance of the coverage of broadcasting
stations.
It was demonstrated, by simulations, that some work on the setup characteristics
may improve performance of the cover-age, including compensating for the
attenuation of the terrain.
4) Prediction of the ‘useable’ coverage of FM radio services
By Ofcom
The thesis discusses about useable coverage of FM services. The limit of ‘usable’
coverage of FM radio services is likely to be defined by the distance from the
transmitter at which usable mono reception is possible in a car.
Both indoor portable reception and high-quality reception with a rooftop aerial are
likely to demand higher field strengths. A figure of around 40 dBμV/m has been
derived for the limit of reception in cars, which corresponds well with the 42
dBμV/m currently assumed for planning purposes, given the large uncertainties in
many of the parameters. On the basis of measurements made on representative
receivers, it seems that the protection ratio figures for mono reception given in
ITU-R Recommendation BS.412 are a valid basis for the determination of ‘usable’
coverage areas.
5) A T-DAB Field Trial Using a Low-Mast Infrastructure
By Roel Schiphorst, Niels A. Moseley, Andries C. Aarden, Marnix Heskamp, and
Cornelis H. Slump
A novel low-mast low-power Terrestrial Digital Audio Broadcasting (T-DAB)
single frequency network topology is described and evaluated in this paper. An
important goal is to investigate whether the pilot network can co-exist with an
existing traditional T-DAB network. The field trial shows that gap filler can
effectively neutralize the adjacent channel interference of the pilot network on the
existing T-DAB network. Moreover, the L-band pilot network is compared with
both band III networks by assessing the indoor coverage of every network. For
estimation of the indoor coverage, 34 objects were investigated. Both the indoor
penetration loss for band III and L-band was determined for each object. Indoor
coverage in a region is reached if 95% of the buildings or more have indoor
coverage. Using this definition, the loss for band III is 21.6 dB and for L-band 24.6
dB. As a result they consider the indoor penetration loss values reported in
literature as too optimistic. Also other parameters of the pilot network were
measured, such as the frequency re-use distance.
6) Performance analysis of digital audio broadcasting under different
modulation schemes and channels
By Monika Srivastava, Bhupendra Singh
In this paper, analysis of Digital audio broadcasting on its four different modes has
been performed. All the possible four modes have been executed and simulated on
SIMULINK platform under different types of modulation schemes and channels.
This paper tried to develop a novel scheme of low cost, complexity wise reduced
communication model for open air performance analysis. Thus the paper
implements a novel method for the purpose of quality improvement in the
communication equipment improvement using DAB. The results that have been
performed on different types of channels are additive white Gaussian noise,
Rayleigh and Rician fading channels. Similarly different modulation schemes in
the model for example BPSK, QPSK, 16 QAM on different channels has been
done. Of all the different types of channels in MATLAB & SIMULINK software
for which a complete detailed table analysis has been done has found that of all the
possible four modes the fourth mode has outperformed with good level of BER
performance ranging between 20% to 22%. This paper has shown that with QPSK
and AWGN Rayleigh channel mode 4 has proved to be the best working mode.
In general, over a recent year’s different Authors tried to describe the FM and
DAB broadcasting through the analysis of coverage and interference for different
environment. For my case, the thesis proposes the way to incorporate the
performance evaluation as well as coverage prediction for FM, to propose the latest
technology in the area of Radio broadcasting.
2.2 COFDM
Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (COFDM) is a form of
modulation which is particularly well-suited to the needs of the terrestrial
broadcasting channel. COFDM can cope with high levels of multipath propagation,
with a wide spread of delays between the received signals. This leads to the
concept of single-frequency networks in which many transmitters send the same
signal on the same frequency, generating “artificial multipath”. COFDM also
copes well with co-channel narrowband interference, as may be caused by the
carriers of existing analogue services. COFDM has therefore been chosen for two
recent new standards for broadcasting – DAB and DVB-T, both of which have
been optimized for their respective applications and have options to suit particular
needs. The special performance of COFDM in respect of multipath and
interference is only achieved by a careful choice of parameters and with attention
to detail in the way in which the forward error-correction coding is applied.
COFDM involves modulating the data onto a large number of carriers using the
FDM technique.
The key features which make it work, in a manner that is so well suited to
terrestrial channels, include:- orthogonality (the “O” of COFDM); the addition of a
guard interval; the use of error coding (the “C” of COFDM), interleaving and
channel-state information (CSI).
The main advantage of the DAB system developed in the European Eureka-147
standard is its ability to deliver high quality audio (near CD quality) services to
mobile receivers under different channel conditions. This is because of the use of
rugged transmission technology called the Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing (COFDM). This is the heart of Digital Audio Broadcasting. OFDM is
multi-carrier system. Data is transmitted at a low symbol rate using many narrow-
band carriers rather than at a higher rate using single wide-band carrier. Carriers
are arranged to be mutually orthogonal, so each carrier has its peak amplitude, in
the frequency domain, where all other have a zero-crossing.
2.2.1 Basic Principle of OFDM
OFDM is a parallel data transmission system, in which several sequential streams
of data are transmitted. This parallel approach spreads the frequency selective
fading over many symbols. This effectively randomizes the burst error caused by
fading or impulse interference so that, instead of several adjacent symbols being
completely destroyed, many symbols are only slightly destroyed. This allows
successful reconstruction of a majority of them even without forward error
correction (FEC). The incoming serial data is first converted from serial to parallel
and grouped into x bits each to form a complex number. The number x determines
the signal constellation of the corresponding subcarrier, such as 16 QAM or 32
QAM. The complex numbers are modulated in a baseband fashion by the inverse
FFT and converted back to serial data for transmission. A guard interval is inserted
between symbols to avoid inter-symbol interference (ISI) caused by multipath
distortion. The discrete symbols are converted to analog and low-pass filtered for
RF up-conversion. The receiver performs the inverse process of the transmitter.
2.3 DAB
Radio broadcasting is one of the most widespread electronic mass media. Since the
beginning of broadcasting in the early 1920s, the market has been widely covered
by the AM and FM emission standards. These broadcasting services have achieved
the technological and operational maturity such that there was hundreds of
programs provider, thousands of HF transmitter and billions of receiver word wide.
They offer a large diversity of speech and audio programs to the listeners.
The world was changing from analog to digital techniques to produce the optimum
performance, with acceptable cost to a large consumer market. There are now
many mass-storage digital medium to offer superior sound quality like CD‟s, hard
disks, digital compact cassettes, Mini-Disks, DVDs etc or streaming and download
formats (such as MP3) for distribution via Internet. Consequently, broadcast
transmission systems now tend to change from conventional analogue transmission
to digital. The first steps in the introduction of digital broadcasting services were
taken by the systems NICAM 728 (Near Instantaneously Companded Audio
Multiplex, developed by the BBC for stereo television sound in the VHF/UHF
bands), DSR (Digital Satellite Radio, which was already shut down), or ADR
(Astra Digital Radio), but none were suited to replace the existing conventional
services completely, especially for mobile reception. For that reason, the universal
digital multimedia broadcasting system Eureka 147 DAB was developed and is
now being introduced worldwide.
The first digital sound broadcasting systems were developed in the early 1980s for
satellite delivery providing CD-like audio quality.
Primarily they broadcast in 10 to 12 GHz bands, employed very little sound data
compression. They were not suitable for mobile reception. Thus, it was not
possible to serve all users, especially not for mobile users. These well-established
FM radio were not able to provide satellite delivery, namely „local services‟. As a
result terrestrial digital sound broadcasting was come into consideration.
Therefore, towards the end of 1986 a consortium of 19 organizations from France,
Germany, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom had signed a co-operation
agreement and applied for notification as a Eureka project. The Eureka 147 project
was initiated through the collaboration between IRT (Institut für Rundfunktechnik)
and CCETT (Commun d‟Etudes de Te´ le´diffusion et Te´ le´communications),
both of which undertake research on behalf of broadcasting organization in their
respective countries.
In the beginning, DAB system was created by the conjunction of two advanced
digital techniques, audio bit-rate reduction, pioneered by IRT, and RF transmission
using a technique known as COFDM, pioneered by CCETT. The BBC contribution
has been diverse, including the third major component in the system, the dynamic,
flexible multiplex and system control mechanism. The BBC contribution also
involved research into many aspects of audio, data and RF parts of the system, as
well as the major role in determining the final system parameters and drafting the
written specification for the system.
As the system has evolved, parameters such as bandwidth of the RF signal have
been changed. The first system approach considered at least 16 stereo programs of
CD audio quality plus ancillary data to be transmitted in the 7 MHz bandwidth of a
television channel. This definitely cannot be achieved by simply transmitting the
combined net bit rates of 16 CD-like program channels, which are around 1.4
Mbps each, over the TV channel. So a high degree of audio data compression
without any perceptible loss of audio quality was mandatory. Data rates below 200
kbps per stereo channel had to be achieved. In Canada experiments with the
COFDM system revealed that substantial performance degradation begins around
1.3MHz and lower. So, a reasonable bandwidth for a DAB channel or „DAB
block‟ was defined as 1.5 MHz. Starting at 7 MHz to fill a continental television
channel, changes have been made to 3.5 MHz and then to 1.5 MHz in order to fit 4
DAB signal, plus guard bands into such a television channel, the final specification
correspond to 1.537 MHz. During this evolution, extensive field test taken
extensive field tests of the system were undertaken by Research Department using
experimental transmitter in London (Crystal Palace) and Birmingham and latterly a
mini-network of low-power transmitter at existing UHF television transmitter site
in Surrey, followed by a London-wide network.
2.3.1 Effect of Multipath reflection
Analog radio networks are able to provide good quality of radio broadcasting
services for fixed reception. But for mobile reception suffers loss of broadcast
quality. For example, FM reception is badly affected by shadowing (i.e. the
blocking or screening of the signals by tall buildings and hills which lie in the
direction of the transmitter) and by passive echoes (the arrival at the receiver of
delayed “multipath” signals which have been reflected from tall buildings and
hills) and AM system is badly affected by seasonal propagation variation that
cause fading and loss of signal. These problems occur due to multipath reflections.
Figure 2.1 multipath effect
To solve these problems and provide audio broadcasting of compact disk quality
Eureka project was developed. DAB eliminates interference and problem of
multipath reflection by using a non-directional whip antenna.
2.3.2 Advantages of DAB
The Eureka 147 DAB system is the most significant advancement in radio
broadcasting technology since the introduction of FM and AM. It offers both
listeners and broadcasters a unique combination of benefits and opportunities. This
includes:
1. Rugged, reliable delivery to fixed, portable and mobile receivers for interference
free reception with just a simple, non-directional whip antenna.
2. Spectrum efficient: This means that it will be possible to increase the number
of radio stations, without congesting the radio waves. As more efficient audio
coding (compression) methods are introduced, it will be possible to carry even
more radio programs with no degradation to existing services, and without needing
to modify existing receivers.
3. Echoes: DAB system is able to use “passive echoes” such that they add in a
constructive manner to the direct signals already received. The Eureka system is
also able to use “active echoes” constructively – i.e. delayed signals generated by
other co-channel transmitters.
4. Single Frequency Networks (SFNs): SFN enables all transmitters covering a
particular area with same set of sound programs to operate on the same
radiofrequency channel. Although the signals emitted by the various transmitters
are received with different time delays, the receiver automatically selects the
stronger signal without interference from overlapping zones. This eliminates the
problem of having to return a receiver at frequent intervals such as in car, and
allow efficient use of spectrum.
5. High-quality digital audio.
6. Flexibility and choice: The DAB signal is essentially a highly flexible over-air
'data-pipe' that can broadcast a wide range of service types, from purely audio-
based to multimedia. Typically, each multiplex can broadcast five or more high-
quality audio services plus a number of extra services. The multiplex can be
dynamically reconfigured to introduce additional services, temporary or
permanent, either with time-of-day or on a day-to-day basis.
7. Rather than searching wavebands, users can select all available stations or
preferred formats from a simple text menu.
8. Added-value system features that will allow enhancements to existing radio
services such as text, graphics and still-pictures, and provide the opportunity to
introduce innovative new services, such as multimedia radio-with-pictures and
broadcast web-sites.
2.3.3 DAB Modes and system parameters
The Eureka 147 DAB system has four transmission modes of operation named as
mode-I, mode-II, mode- III, and mode-IV, each having its particular set of
parameters. The use of these transmission modes depends on the network
configuration and operating frequencies. This makes the DAB system operate over
a wide range of frequencies from 30 MHz to 3 GHz.
Transmission mode –I is designed for large area coverage. It is suited for single
frequency networks (SFNs) operating at frequencies below 300 MHz (VHF Band-
III).
Transmission mode –II is designed principally for Terrestrial DAB for small to
medium coverage areas at frequencies below 1.5 GHz (UHF L-Band). 23
Transmission mode –III is available for satellite broadcasting below 3 GHz (UHF
L-and).
Transmission mode –IV is used for seamless coverage of large areas by means of
SFNs operating in the L-Band. The parameters of Mode IV lie between those of
Mode-I and Mode-II.