Robust Preamble Design for Synchronization, Signaling Transmission and Channel Estimation

TL;DR

This paper proposes an improved preamble scheme for DVB-T2 that enhances synchronization, signaling, and channel estimation by inserting optimal m sequences, resulting in better performance over fading channels.

Contribution

It introduces a novel preamble with optimal m sequences for improved CFO estimation, signaling, and robustness without extra overhead.

Findings

Enhanced CFO estimation accuracy

Increased signaling capacity

Improved robustness to fading channels

Abstract

The European second generation digital video broadcasting standard (DVB-T2) introduces a P1 symbol. This P1 symbol facilitates the coarse synchronization and carries 7-bit transmission parameter signaling (TPS), including the fast Fourier transform size, single-input/single-output and multiple-input/single-output transmission modes, etc. However, this P1 symbol suffers from obvious performance loss over fading channels. In this paper, an improved preamble scheme is proposed, where a pair of optimal m sequences are inserted into the frequency domain. One sequence is used for carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation, and the other carries TPS to inform the receiver about the transmission configuration parameters. Compared with the conventional preamble scheme, the proposed preamble improves CFO estimation performance and the signaling capacity. Meanwhile, without additional overhead, the proposed scheme exploits more active pilots than the conventional schemes. In this way, it can facilitate the channel estimation, improve the frame synchronization accuracy as well as enhance its robustness to frequency selective fading channels.