Understanding Digital Terrestrial Broadcasting

Seamus O’Leary9781580530637, 1-58053-063-X

As digital television and radio standards are established around the world, and digital signal processing drives rapid advances in broadcasting, forward-thinking broadcast engineers and technicians need to be current on the latest developments in digital broadcasting encoding practices, standards, and systems, including MPEG signals. This comprehensive book provides that essential knowledge. The book emphasizes the transmission aspects of Digital Television (DTV), including modulators, transmitters and demodulators, the Digital Video Broadcasting standard for terrestrial Television (DVB-T), and the networks used to distribute and broadcast DTV signals. You find detailed coverage of critical topics, including Microwave Multipoint Distribution Systems (MMDS), Single Frequency Networks (SFN), and Multi Frequency Networks (MFN). Other key topics include details on receiver carrier to noise ratios, field strengths, tests and measurements on DTV signals, set-top boxes, application programming interfaces, and the development of DTV in parallel with analog TV. Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) is also explored, including audio encoding standards and emerging digital radio standards for medium and long wave broadcasts. The book’s breadth of coverage, wealth of illustrations and diagrams, combined with a minimum of mathematics, make this book a timesaving resource and valuable introduction to this fast-developing technology.