New 'SuperTV' reception technology could change Mobile DTV equation
Dec 6, 2011 11:24 AM, By Phil Kurz
While television broadcasters in the United States continue to slog through the engineering, marketing and receiver device issues to make Mobile DTV a success, a new receiver technology for reception of conventional 8-VSB ATSC transmission promises to take pristine DTV reception off the rooftop and put it on the road.
Legend Silicon, a fabless semiconductor company specializing in TV receiver demodulators in Fremont, CA, is targeting the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month for a demonstration of a new automobile-based TV reception system for legacy ATSC A/53 signals.
The demonstration will rely on a technology the company has dubbed SuperTV, a maximal-ratio combining (MRC) diversity reception technology for single-carrier terrestrial television broadcasts. According to Legend Silicon COO and VP of product marketing Raj Karamchedu, the CES showing will use an FPGA-based version of SuperTV technology using four car antennas that makes possible reception of legacy ATSC from a moving vehicle.
While ATSC A/53 was designed for reception of 8-VSB by a TV antenna mounted some 30ft overhead on a rooftop, SuperTV combines signals from multiple antennas to achieve ground level reception capable of defeating both Doppler effects and multipath problems that normally would prevent reception of conventional DTV signals in a moving car, Karamchedu said. With two antennas and the MRC technology, the company has seen antenna gain as high as 7dB, and with four it has achieved 12dB of antenna gain, he said.
"With our breakthrough SuperTV technology, for the first time our customers can enhance picture reception quality by simply adding more antennas," said Lin Yang, Legend Silicon co-founder, CTO and inventor of single-carrier MRC diversity technology in a company press release.
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