ELX 121 - Electronic Communication 2

Digital Television Multiplexing

Prepared by: Clark L. Felisilda

 Digital Television Multiplexing

• Objective
—To determine how video and audio information is
mutiplexed in a modern digital television signal.
 Digital Television Multiplexing

• Procedure
1. Perform an internet search on the terms HDTV, digital
television, or high defenition TV.
2. Locate documents that explain the operation,
modulation, and multiplexing of the U.S. HDTV system. It
is called the Advanced Television Standards Committee
(ATSC) digital TV standard.
3. Answer the following questions.
 Digital Television Multiplexing
• Digital TV
— Digital TV (DTV), also known as high-definition TV (HDTV), was designed to
replace the National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) system, which
was invented in the 1940s and 1950s. The goal of HDTV is to greatly improve
the picture and sound quality.
— After more than a decade of evaluating alternative HDTV systems, the FCC
has finalized the standards and decreed that HDTV will eventually become the
U.S. TV standard by April 2009. The first HDTV stations began transmission in
the 10 largest U.S. cities on September 1, 1998.
— HDTV for the United States was developed by the Advanced Television
Systems Committee (ATSC) in the 1980s and 1990s. HDTV uses the scanning
concept to paint a picture on the CRT, so you can continue to think of the
HDTV screen in terms of scan lines, as you would think of the standard NTSC
analog screen.
 Digital Television Multiplexing

• HDTV Transmission Concepts

—In HDTV both the video and the audio signals must be digitized by
A/D converters and transmitted serially to the receiver. Because of
the very high frequency of video signals, special techniques must
be used to transmit the video signal over a standard 6-MHz-
bandwidth TV channel. And because both video and audio must
be transmitted over the same channel, multiplexing techniques
must be used. The FCC’s requirement is that all this information
be transmitted reliably over the standard 6-MHz TV channels now
defined for NTSC TV.
Digital Television Multiplexing
 Digital Television Multiplexing
• Assume that the video to be transmitted contains frequencies up
to 4.2 MHz. For this signal to be digitized, it must be sampled at
least 2 times per cycle or at a minimum sampling rate of 8.4 MHz.
If each sample is translated to an 8-bit word (byte) and the bytes
are transmitted serially, the data stream has a rate of 8 x 8.4 MHz,
or 67.2 MHz. Multiply this by 3 to get 67.2 x 3 = 201.6 MHz. Add
to this the audio channels, and the total required bandwidth is
almost 300 MHz. To permit this quantity of data to be transmitted
over the 6-MHz channel, special encoding and modulation
techniques are used.
 Digital Television Multiplexing

• MPEG-2 is the data compression method used in HDTV.

The MPEG-2 data compressor processes the data
according to an algorithm that effectively reduces any
redundancy in the video signal.
 Digital Television Multiplexing

• The audio portion of the HDTV signal is also digital. It

provides for compact disk (CD) quality audio. The audio
system can accommodate up to six audio channels,
permitting monophonic sound, stereo, and multichannel
surround sound. The channel arrangement is flexible to
permit different systems. For example, one channel could
be used for a second language transmission or closed
captioning.
Digital Television Multiplexing
 Digital Television Multiplexing
• Next the video and audio data streams are packetized; i.e., they
are converted to short blocks of data bytes that segment the video
and audio signals. These packets are multiplexed along with
some synchronizing signals to form the final signal to be
transmitted. The result is a 188-bit packet containing both video
and audio data plus 4 bytes of synchronizing bytes and a header.
See Fig. 23-28. The header identifies the number of the packet
and its sequence as well as the video format. Next the packets
are assembled into frames of data representing one frame of
video. The complete frame consists of 626 packets transmitted
sequentially. The final signal is sent to the modulator.
Digital Television Multiplexing
 Digital Television Multiplexing

• The modulation scheme used in HDTV is 8-VSB, or eight-

level vestigial sideband, amplitude modulation. The carrier
is suppressed, and only the upper sideband is
transmitted. The serial digital data is sent to a D/A
converter where each sequential 3-bit group is converted
to a discrete voltage level. This system encodes 3 bits per
symbol, thereby greatly increasing the data rate within the
channel. An example is shown in Fig. 23-29.
Digital Television Multiplexing
— Each 3-bit group is converted to a
relative level of -7, -5, -3,-1, +1, +3,
+5, or +7. This is the signal that
amplitude-modulates the carrier. The
resulting symbol rate is 10,800
symbols per second. This translates
to a data rate of 3 x 10,080 = 32.4
mbps. Eliminating the extra RS and
trellis bits gives an actual video/audio
rate of about 19.3 Mbps.
— A modified version of this format is
used when the HDTV signal is to be
transmitted over a cable system.
Trellis coding is eliminated and 16-
VSB modulation is used to encode 4
bits per symbol. This gives double the
data rate of terrestrial HDTV
transmission (38.6 Mbps).
 Digital Television Multiplexing

• HDTV Receiver
—An HDTV receiver picks up the composite signal and
then demodulates and decodes the signal into the original
video and audio information. A simplified receiver block
diagram is shown in Fig. 23-30.
Digital Television Multiplexing
 Digital Television Multiplexing

• 1. How many individual signals are multiplexed in the

ATSC HDTV system?
—There are two individual signals multiplexed in the ATSC
HDTV system, the Video Signals and the Audio signals.
 Digital Television Multiplexing

• 2. Does HDTV use FDM or TDM?

—The two most common types of multiplexing are frequency-
division multiplexing (FDM) and time-division multiplexing (TDM).
In general, FDM (Frequency Division Multiplexing) systems are
used for analog information and TDM (Time Domain Multiplexing)
systems are used for digital information. HDTV (High Definition
Television) use TDM. FDM is for analog only while the TDM is
both for analog and digital.
 Digital Television Multiplexing

• 2. Does HDTV use FDM or TDM?

—HDTV uses TDM Time-division multiplexing (TDM) is considered a
digital process which can be applied when the transmission
medium data rate capacity is higher than the data rate
requirement of the transmitting and receiving devices while FDM
is an analog technique which is applied only when the bandwidth
of the link is greater than the combined bandwidth of the signals
to be transmitted.
 Digital Television Multiplexing

• 3. What is the bandwidth of an HDTV channel?

—A full resolution MPEG2 HDTV stream requires 19.3 Megabits Per
Second (Mbps) of data bandwidth.
—HDTV currently requires 12-19 mbps of bandwidth per channel
with MPEG-2 compression.
—When the new compression technologies become available in
2006, HDTV is expected to require 6.5 – 8 mbps per channel.
 Digital Television Multiplexing

• 4. What is the net data rate through the channel?

—Uncompressed serial digital signal (such as HD-SDI) for HDTV
transmission has a transmission bit-rate of approximately 1.5Gbps
(1.5 Gigabits per second). This is a formidable bit-rate, and
requires special fibre-optic transmission system components, and
the very careful choice of interconnecting cables, connectors and
circuit wiring.
—HDTV has already been compressed down to 20 mbps. Emerging
standards might cut that to 10 mbps. But with high compression,
image quality suffers.
 Digital Television Multiplexing

• 5. What kind of modulation is used to transmit the

HDTV signal?
—HDTV digital televisions usually uses quadrature amplitude
modulation and 8VSB modulation. The 8VSB modulation is a
standard in US that was implemented by the ATSC or the
Advanced Television Systems Committee.
—HDTV digital televisions mostly used tuners that receives over-
the-air digital channel broadcast such as QAM tuner and ATSC
tuner.