FEC makes digital broadcasts clearer

Electromagnetic News Report, Jan/Feb 2001

The satellite-to-car radio broadcasting system is susceptible to fading and other impairments that interfere with reception, reports Microwaves & RF. To make the system more robust, Hui-Ling and Vijitha Weerackody of Bell Telephone Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, New Jersey, and M.J.

Fernandez Getino Garcia of the Department of Signals, Systems, and Radio Communications, Polytechnic University of Madrid (Spain), propose a forward-error-correction (FEC) scheme. Based on two timedivision-multiplexed (TDM) satellites transmitting different streams of source-coded bits subject to different interleaver depths, FEC allows one TDM satellite transmission to be used to minimize tuning delays and the other to obtain a better quality signal. The source-coded bit stream can be FEC coded, interleaved, and transmitted using different satellites.