BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL

AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

Dissertation Part-1
- Submitted by

TANMOY PAUL
Reg. No.- 131630410017
Roll No.- 16310513017
M.Tech, E.C.E, 3rd Semester

Under The Guidance of

AVIK CHAKRABORTY, Assistant Professor

Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering
Bengal Institute Of Technology & Management

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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

Contents
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.

Introduction
Theoretical Background
History
Proposed Scope of my work
References

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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

Acronyms

Stands for

BER

Bit Error Rate

DAB

Digital Audio Broadcasting

ISI

Inter-Symbol Interference

BCH
OFDM
COFDM
ETSI

Bose-Choudhuri-Hocquenghem
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
European Telecommunications Standards Institute

FPGA

Field Programmable Gate Array

FEC Codes

Forward Error Correcting Codes

Quadrature Phase Shift Keying

QPSK

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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

I.

Introduction

Today we live in a world of digital communication systems and services. These analog
standards are now failing to provide the quality of services to the listeners they expect. Now
the essential parts of the production processes in radio houses was to change to digital ones in
recent times. There are many mass-storage digital medium to offer superior sound quality like
CDs, hard disks, digital compact cassettes, Mini-Disks, DVDs etc or streaming & download
formats (such as MP3) for distribution via Internet. Consequently, broadcast transmission
systems tend to change from conventional analogue transmission to digital. The first steps in
the introduction of digital broadcasting services were taken by the BBC for stereo television
sound in the VHF/UHF bands), DSR (Digital Satellite Radio, which was already shut down)
or ADR (Astra Digital Radio), none were suited to replace the existing conventional services
completely, especially for mobile reception. For that reason, the universal digital multimedia
broadcasting system Eureka 147 DAB was developed & is now being introduced worldwide.
Following goals were set up for DAB from the beginning with the sole aim of quality audio
for mobile reception:
High quality audio comparable to that of the CD;
Suitable for mobile reception in a car, even at high speeds;
Efficient use of frequency spectrum;
Transmission capacity for ancillary data;
Low transmitting power;
Terrestrial, cable and satellite delivery options;
The advantage of the DAB system developed in the European Eureka-147 standard is
its ability to deliver high quality audio services to mobile receivers under different channel
conditions. This is because of the use of rugged transmission technology called the Coded
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (COFDM). This is the heart of Digital Audio
Broadcasting. COFDM modulation combines the multi-carrier modulation technique OFDM
with Convolution Channel Coding in such a way that the system can exploit both time and
frequency diversity.

II.

Theory Related This Paper:

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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

BER (Bit Error Rate): What does BER suppose to??? The bit error rate or bit

error ratio (BER) is the number of bit errors divided by the total number of transferred
bits during a studied time interval. BER is a unit less performance measure, often
expressed as a percentage. The bit error probability pe is the expectation value of the
BER. The BER can be considered as approximate estimate of the bit error probability.
This estimate is accurate for a long time interval and a high number of bit errors. For
AWGN channel, the BER as function of Eb/N0 is given by:

. [1]

Working Principle of DAB System: The working principle of the DAB

system is illustrated in conceptual block diagram shown in fig. below. At the input of
the system the analog signals such as audio and data services are encoded and through
Channel Coder it is being fed to MSC (Main Service Channel) multiplexer, where
through FIC (Fast Information Channel) service information is being multiplexed in
Transmission Multiplexer to form the DAB frame. After signal passing through
Transmission Multiplexer passed to OFDM signal generator. This block is the heart of
the DAB system. These technical aspects make the system very reliable, multiprogramme, providing robust reception on mobile receivers using simple antenna.[2]

Fig: DAB transmission Block Diagram

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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

MSC: Main Service Channel carries all user data, e.g, audio, multimedia. The MSC
consists of Common Interleaved Frames (CIF) which results in a data rate
of2.304Mbits/s.
FIC: Fast Information Channel contains blocks with 256 bits each.It contains all
control information which is required for interpreting the configuration and content of
the MSC.[2]
OFDM: Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is a method of
encoding digital data on multiple carrier frequencies. OFDM has developed into a
popular scheme for wideband digital communication, whether wireless or copper
wires, used in applications such as digital television and audio broadcasting, DSL
Internet Access, Wireless Networks, Power Line Networks and 4G mobile
communications. COFDM is almost the same as like OFDM except here signals are
being coded first with FEC methods. This is to overcome errors in the transmission due
to lost carriers from frequency selective fading, channel noise and other propagation
effects.
OFDM is a frequency-division multiplexing (FDM) scheme used as a digital multicarrier modulation method. A large number of closely spaced orthogonal sub-carrier signals
are used to carry data on several parallel data streams/channels. Each sub-carrier is modulated
with a conventional modulation scheme (such as quadrature amplitude modulation or phaseshift keying) at a low symbol rate, maintaining total data rates similar to conventional singlecarrier modulation schemes in the same bandwidth. The primary advantage of OFDM over
single-carrier schemes is its ability to cope with severe channel conditions ( e,g attenuation of
high frequencies in a long copper wire, narrowband interference and fading due to multipath)
without complex equalization filters.
The main advantage of the DAB system developed in the European Eureka-147
standard is its ability to deliver high quality audio services to mobile receivers under different
channel conditions. This is because of the use of rugged transmission technology called the
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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (COFDM). This is the heart of Digital
Audio Broadcasting. COFDM modulation combines the multi-carrier modulation technique
OFDM with Convolution Channel Coding in such a way that the system can exploit both
time and frequency diversity. This is achieved by interleaving data symbols, in the time and
frequency domains, prior to transmission.

Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) is a basic noise model used

in Information theory to mimic the effect of many random processes that occur in
nature. The modifiers denote specific characteristics:

'Additive' because it is added to any noise that might be intrinsic to the information
system.

'White' refers to idea that it has uniform power across the frequency band for the
information system. It is an analogy to the color white which has uniform emissions at
all frequencies in the visible spectrum.

'Gaussian' because it has a normal distribution in the time domain with an average time
domain value of zero.
AWGN is often used as channel model in which the only impairment to communication

is a linear addition of wideband or white noise with a constant spectral density & a Gaussian
distribution of amplitude. The model does not account for fading, frequency selectivity,
interference, non-linearity or dispersion.

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OFDM Symbol Demodulator

The OFDM symbol demodulator block demodulates the OFDM symbols from the
synchronized DAB frame. The demodulation is done by removing the null symbol and the
phase reference symbol.

Generation of BPSK
In Phase Shift Keying technique, the phase of the carrier is changed according to input
the data signal. The phase of the modulated signal itself conveys some information; in
this case the demodulator must have a reference signal to compare the received signal
phase. This is termed as coherent detection. BPSK is the simplest form of phase shift
keying (PSK). It uses two phases which are 0 and 180.

Generation of BPSK

To generate a binary PSK signal, we have to represent the binary sequence in polar
form with symbols 1 and 0 represented by constant amplitude levels of +Eb & -Eb
respectively. The resulting binary wave (in polar form) and a sinusoidal carrier 1(t),
whose frequency fc = (nc/Tb) for some fixed integer nc are applied to a product
modulator. The carrier and the timing pulses used to generate the binary wave are
usually extracted from a common master clock; the desired PSK wave is obtained at the
modulator output.

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To detect the original binary sequence of 1s and 0s, we apply the noisy PSK signal x(t)
(at the channel output) to a correlator, which is supplied with a locally generated
coherent reference signal 1(t). The correlator output x1 is compared with a threshold of
zero volts. If x1> 0, the receiver decides in favor of symbol 1. On the other hand, if x1<0,
it decides in favor of symbol 0. If x1 is exactly zero, the receiver makes a random guess
in favor of 0 or 1.
Generation of a QPSK signal
At the input of the modulator, the digital datas even bits (i.e., bits 0,2,4 and so on) are
stripped from the data stream by a bit-splitter and are multiplied with a carrier to generate a
BPSK signal (called PSKI). At the same time, the datas odd bits (i.e., bits 1,3,5 and so on)
are stripped from the data stream and are multiplied with the same carrier to generate a 2nd
BPSK signal (called PSKQ). However, the PSKQ signals carrier is phase shifted by 90o
before being modulated. The two BPSK signals are then simply added together for
transmission and as they have the same carrier frequency.

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Each adjacent symbol only differs by one bit, sometimes known as quaternary or quadriphase
PSK or 4-PSK, or 4-QAM. QPSK uses four points on the constellation diagram, equispaced
around a circle. With four phases, QPSK can encode two bits per symbol shown in the
diagram to minimize the BER- twice the rate of BPSK.
Reception of a QPSK signal
Figure below shows the block diagram of QPSK demodulation.

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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

It is to be noticed that the arrangement uses two product detectors to simultaneously

demodulate the two BPSK signals. This simultaneously recovers the pairs of bits in the
original data. The two signals are cleaned-up using a comparator or some other signal
conditioners then the bits are put back in order using a 2-bit parallel to serial
converter.Importantly, if the phase error is 90o, the amplitude of the recovered message is
zero.

III.

History relating this paper

The first steps in the introduction of digital broadcasting services were taken by the BBC
for stereo television sound in the VHF/UHF bands), DSR (Digital Satellite Radio, which was
already shut down), or ADR (Astra Digital Radio), but none were suited to replace the
existing conventional services completely, especially for mobile reception.
Following goals were set up for DAB from the beginning with the sole aim of quality
audio for mobile reception:
Suitable for mobile reception in a car, even at high speeds;
Efficient use of frequency spectrum;
Transmission capacity for ancillary data;
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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

Low transmitting power;

Terrestrial, cable and satellite delivery options;
Works so Far:
Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) was developed within the European Eureka-147

standard [3] to provide CD quality audio programmes along with ancillary data
transmission (e.g. travel and traffic information, still and moving pictures, etc.) to
fixed, portable and mobile receivers using simple whip antennas [4].
In 1995, ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) adopted DAB as
the only European standard for digital radio. There is a need for more spectrally
efficient broadcasting technology apart from conventional Analog systems[8].
Earlier work focused on the effect of protection in diverse transmission channels,
design & implementation of DAB channel decoder on FPGA hardware. [6].
K. Vivek et. al. has presented the bit error rate (BER) analysis of the coded OFDM
communication systems [7]. Their simulation result showed that space time turbo
coding with OFDM system is seen to provide maximum coding gain.

IV. Progress of Relating Topic

In this paper, I propose a BCH/Convolution coding based concatenated channel coding
technique for improved performance of DAB system in different transmission channels using
PAM/QAM and then QPSK modulation techniques. Ill work on a DAB base-band
transmission system based on Eureka-147 standard [1]. The design will consist of energy
dispersal scrambler, QPSK symbol mapping, Convolutional encoder (FEC), D-QPSK
modulator with frequency interleaving and OFDM signal generator (IFFT) in the transmitter
side and in the receiver corresponding inverse operations is carried out along with fine time
synchronization using phase reference symbol. Bit error rate (BER) has been considered as
the performance index in all analysis. The analysis has been carried out with simulation
studies under MATLAB environment.
GENERAL BER ANALYSIS OF PAM
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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

In this section we derive the exact bit error probability of an I-ary PAM. We determine and
illustrate the regular patterns shown in the th bit error probability due to the characteristics of
Gray code bit mapping. From these regularities we formulate the exact BER expression.
A. System Model
Signal waveforms of one-dimensional amplitude modulation I-ary PAM can be expressed as
s(t)= AICos2fct, 0<tT

.(1)

where , AI is the signal amplitude of the in-phase components, fc is the carrier frequency and
T is the symbol time duration. In the I-ary PAM scheme, a serial data sequence is converted
to log2I bits of data. In (1), AI the amplitude is selected independently from the set {d,
3d.(I-1)d}, where 2d is the minimum distance between signal points.

In this modulation scheme, a perfect Gray code is assumed and all the symbols are
assumed to be transmitted equally likely. The received PAM signal may be demodulated
coherently and for simplicity, we assume perfect carrier recovery & symbol synchronization.
B. Regular Patterns in Developing BER Expression for I-ary PAM
The average bit error probability of an I-ary PAM scheme can be obtained by averaging the
error probability of the k-th bit. Thus, characterizes the BER of an I-ary PAM scheme. First
we present the BER expression for 4-PAM, and tabulate the regular patterns for developing
BER expressions. Then we generalize the BER expression of I-ary PAM for an arbitrary
amplitude level.
1) BER of 4-PAM:
Let us begin with the simple case of 4-PAM. Fig. 1 shows th4-PAM signal constellation and
its decision regions where each signal point is represented by a 2-bit symbol, constituted by i1
& i2 bits..
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In fig, i1 & i2denote the regions in which i1=1 & i2=1 respectively. We will show the position
of the bits on the 2-bit symbol has an effect on the bit error probability. For 4-PAM there are
two possible cases (class I & Class II) of the probabilities, Pb(k),that the kth bit(k=1,2) is in
error.
For class I, we consider only the i1 bit. Then the constellation can be separated into two
regions based on the decision boundary represented by the solid line at the origin (see Fig1).
In this case, zero is the decision boundary and the signal point can be at a distance d or 3d
from the decision boundary. A bit error will occur if the noise exceeds d or 3d. In this case,
the probability that the first bit i1, is in error is:

Pb(1)=

..(4)

Where erfc(.) is the complementary error function, which is defined as

(5)

For class II, we consider the i2 bit while ignoring the i1 bit. The dashed lines crossing -2d &
2d are given as the decision boundaries of the decision regions. From the regions separated
by these boundaries, we can define the individual cases of bit error as related to the
magnitude of the noise. In the left half side of the plane, when i2=1, a bit error will occur if
the noise exceeds d but will not occur if the noise exceeds 5d. The same analysis also applies
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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

for the right half side of the plane. Therefore, the error probability of the second bit,i2 can be
expressed as

Pb(2)=

..(6)

Finally, the exact average bit error probability for 4-PAM is obtained by averaging the bit
error probabilities given by (4) and (6), that is
(7)

By following steps similar to those used above, bit error probabilities can be easily
obtained for higher-order PAM (for example, 8-PAM, 16-PAM, 32-PAM, and so on).
2) Description of the Regular Pattern in BER Expression for I-ary PAM:
From the above results, the bit error probability, Pb(k), the kth bit is in error can be represented
as follows:

Pb(k)=

..(8)

We summarize the derivation regularities in Table I, where the sequences

&

are tabulated for various I-ary PAM schemes. These patterns provide valuable
information for deriving the BER of coherently demodulated Gray coded I-ary PAM such
that the signal constellation of the kth bits for the case of I-ary PAM is similar to the case of
I/2-PAM. As shown in Table I, a regular pattern can be observed for the BER analysis. When
k=log2I the 1st term

of begins with a value of I/2. The value for the second term is the

first decremented by 1, and the third term is the second with a change of sign. The value of

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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

the fourth term of

the third incremented by 1 and the fifth value is the fourth with a

change of sign.
TABLE I: GRAY CODED BIT SEQUENCE FOR AN I-ARY PAM SIGNAL CONSTELLATION

TABLE II: REGULAR PATTERNS OF [X (k)] AND [Y (k)] FOR BER OF I-ARY PAM

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III. GENERAL BER ANALYSIS OF QAM

In this section, we derive the exact and general BER expression for M-ary QAM. We first
analyze the bit error probability of square QAM and then provide the BER expression of
rectangular QAM.
A. System Model
M-ary square QAM signal waveforms consist of two independently amplitude-modulated
carriers in quadrature, which can be expressed as
s(t)=AIcos2fct-AJ2fct,

0tT..(11)

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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

where AI & AJ are respectively the amplitudes of the in-phase and quadrature components, fc
is the carrier frequency & T is the symbol time duration. In M-ary square QAM, log2M bits of
the serial information stream are mapped onto a two-dimensional signal constellation using
Gray coding. AI & AJ are selected independently over the set {d,3d.(M-1)d} where 2d
is the Euclidean distance between two adjacent points and is given by

(12)

Where

is the bit energy.

B. General BER Expression of M-ary Square QAM

The BER analysis of arbitrary M-ary square QAM can be obtained through steps similar to
those followed in the analysis of M-ary PAM. That is, the bit error probability, Pb(k), that the
kth bit is in error can be expressed as

Pb(k)=

..(13)

From this expression we can find regular patterns of [XM(k)] & [YM(k)] in the BER derivation
for various M-ary square QAM schemes. From these regular patterns, the kth bit error
probability of M-ary square QAM is expressed as

Pb(k)=

..(14)

When , k=1 (14) reduces to the familiar result ([8], (16)), that is

Pb(k)=

.(15)
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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

Since the demodulation of an M-ary square QAM signal is equivalent to the demodulation of
two independent Mary PAM signals in quadrature, a bit error occurs when a received
vector resides in the wrong decision region for both in-phase and quadrature PAM signals.
Finally, the exact expression of average bit error probability of M-ary square QAM can be
obtained by averaging the bit error probability given by (14), yielding

Pb =

..(17)

which is identical to the result presented in [9, eq. (16)]. For high SNR, the first term (i=0) is
dominant in (16). Thus, for high SNR the BER of M-ary square QAM can be approximated
to a certain degree of accuracy by neglecting some of the higher order terms in (16), i.e.

Pb

(18)

Note that (18) is the same result as [9, eq. (13)], [12, eq. (7.24)],[13, eq. (11.46a)], and [14].

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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

MATLAB PROGRAM FOR GENERATING M-ary QAM BER

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% FUNCTION THAT CALCULATES THE BER OF M-QAM IN AWGN
% n_bits: Input, number of bits
% M: Input, constellation size
% EbNodB: Input, energy per bit to noise power spectral density
% ber: Output, bit error rate
% Copyright RAYmaps (www.raymaps.com)

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

function[ber]= QAM_AWGN(n_bits, M, EbNodB)

% Transmitter
k=log2(M);
EbNo=10^(EbNodB/10);
x=transpose(round(rand(1,n_bits)));
h1=modem.qammod(M);
h1.inputtype='bit';
h1.symbolorder='gray';
y=modulate(h1,x);

% Channel
Eb=mean((abs(y)).^2)/k;
sigma=sqrt(Eb/(2*EbNo));
w=sigma*(randn(1,n_bits/k)+1i*randn(1,n_bits/k));

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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

r=y+w';

% Receiver
h2=modem.qamdemod(M);
h2.outputtype='bit';
h2.symbolorder='gray';
h2.decisiontype='hard decision';
z=demodulate(h2,r);
ber=(n_bits-sum(x==z))/n_bits
return
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

The above program results the output as:

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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

IV.BINARY PHASE SHIFT KEYING

A. Implementation
In coherent binary PSK system, the pair of signals s1(t) and s2(t) used to represent binary
symbols 1 and 0, respectively. They are defined by

for binary 0

for binary 1

A pair of sinusoidal waves that differ only in a relative phase shift of 180 degree, are
referred to as antipodal signals. Hence, the signal space can be represented by the single
basis function

where 0tTb

B. Bit error rate

The bit error rate for coherent binary Phase shift keying is

As we increase the transmitted signal per energy bit, Eb, for a specified noise spectral
density N0, the message points corresponding to symbols 1 and 0 move further apart and
the average probability of error Pe is correspondingly reduced in accordance with the
above equation.
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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

C. BER ANALYSIS
As we mentioned earlier in the paper, there are many factors that will decide the
performance of different modulation techniques. One of the factors is the bit error rate.
This specifies the number of bits that are error when a set of bits are transmitted.
To calculate the BER of the BPSK system using the Graphical User Interface (BERTool)
we can proceed with two ways.

IV.THE SIMULATION MODEL

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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

Fig. presents the complete block diagram of the DAB system which was modeled and
simulated by us in MATLAB environment. The main objective of this simulation study is to
evaluate the BER performance of the DAB system using block coding combined with
convolutional coding techniques. The simulation parameters are obtained from Table I for
transmission mode-II. A frame based processing is used in this simulation model. The system
model was exposed to AWGN channel, Rayleigh fading channel and Rician channel for
performance analysis. The important blocks of the simulation model is discussed in detail as
follows:
A. Energy dispersal scrambler
In order to ensure appropriate energy dispersal in the transmitted signal, the individual inputs
of the energy dispersal scramblers shown in Fig 3. shall be scrambled by a modulo-2 addition
with a pseudo-random binary sequence (PRBS), prior to convolutional encoding. The PRBS
shall be defined as the output of the feedback shift register and shall use a polynomial of
degree 9, defined by:
P(X) = X9+X5+1

B. Viterbi decoding
For decoding these convolutional codes the Viterbi algorithm [10] will be used, which offers
best performance according to the maximum likelihood criteria. The input to the Viterbi
decoder will be hard-decided bits that are 0 or 1, which is referred to as a hard decision.
C. Block coding
In this work we have implemented channel coding that comprises block coding followed by
convolutional coding. In block coding, we divide our message into blocks, each of k bits,
called data words. We add r redundant bits to each block to make the length n = k + r. The
resulting n-bit blocks are called codewords. In a cyclic code, if a codeword is cyclically
shifted (rotated), the result is another codeword. A Hamming code is a linear error-correcting
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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

code. Hamming codes can detect up to two simultaneous bit errors, and correct single-bit
errors. Number of parity bits in hamming codes is:
nk=m

where m 3.

The Hamming distance between two words is the number of differences between
corresponding bits. To guarantee correction of up to t errors in all cases, the minimum
Hamming distance in a block code must be:
dmin = 2t + 1 (3)

V. Proposed Scope of Relating Topic

In this paper, I propose a BCH/Convolution coding based concatenated channel coding
technique for improved performance of DAB system in different transmission channels. Ill
work on a DAB base-band transmission system based on Eureka-147 standard [1]. The
design consists of energy dispersal scrambler, QPSK symbol mapping, Convolutional
encoder (FEC), D-QPSK modulator with frequency interleaving and OFDM signal generator
(IFFT) in the transmitter side and in the receiver corresponding inverse operations is carried
out along with fine time synchronization using phase reference symbol. DAB transmission
mode-II is implemented. A frame based processing is used in this work. Bit error rate (BER)
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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

has been considered as the performance index in all analysis. The analysis has been carried
out with simulation studies under MATLAB environment.
It is all recognized that there is a great impact of channel coding on the performances of
OFDM based wireless communication system to provide high data rates over severe
multipath channels.
The ISI in OFDM based communication system can be eliminated by adding a guard
interval which significantly simplifies the receiver structure. However, in order to take
advantage of the diversity provided by the multi-path fading, appropriate frequency
interleaving and channel coding is essential. Therefore, channel coding becomes an
indivisible part in most OFDM system and a significant amount of research work has focused
on optimum encoder, decoder and interleaver design for information transmission via OFDM
over fading environments [9]. On the other hand, some subcarriers of OFDM system may be
completely lost because of deep fades. In this case, the overall performance will be largely
dominated by a few subcarriers with small amplitudes. Error correction code can be used to
avoid this domination by the weakest subcarriers.

Applications:
Traditionally radio programmes were broadcast on different frequencies
via AM and FM, and the radio had to be tuned into each frequency, as needed. This
used up a comparatively large amount of spectrum for a relatively small number of
stations, limiting listening choice. DAB is a digital radio broadcasting system that
through the application of multiplexing and compression combines multiple audio
streams onto a relatively narrow band centred on a single broadcast frequency called
a DAB ensemble.
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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

Within an overall target bit rate for the DAB ensemble, individual stations can be
allocated different bit rates. The number of channels within a DAB ensemble can be
increased by lowering average bit rates, but at the expense of the quality of streams.
Error correction under the DAB standard makes the signal more robust but reduces the
total bit rate available for streams.
The proposed concatenated channel coding can provide an improved BER
performance in different channels for OFDM-based DAB system. From the simulation
results it is observed that FEC is practically well suited for channel coding giving a
better coding gain in AWGN channel, in Rayleigh fading channel and better BER.
OFDM system implementation: OFDM can be implemented for wireless
communications systems such as cellular mobile phone systems, fixed wireless phone
systems, wireless data links and wireless computer local area networks. If it is to be
used in any of these applications then the bandwidth used must be sufficiently high to
compete with other radio technologies. There are two main ways in which the OFDM
signal can be processed, which are using a general purpose DSP, or by implementing
the processing in hardware using customized ICs.

VI. References:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_error_rate
[2] Jochen Schiller, Mobile Communications, Pearson Education Publications,2007
[3] ETSI, "Radio Broadcasting Systems; Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) to mobile,
portable and fixed receivers," EN 300 401, V1.3.3, (2001-05), April 2001. Wolfgang Hoeg&
Thomas Lauterbach, Digital Audio Broadcasting
[4] F. Kozamernik, "Digital Audio Broadcasting - radio now and for the future," EBU
Technical Review, no. 265 Autumn 1995.
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BER Performance Analysis of DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING SYSTEM

[5] Kai-Sheng Yang, Chao-Tang Yu Yu-Pin Chang, "Improved Channel Codec

Implementation and Performance Analysis of OFDM based DAB Systems," in IWCMC 2006
- Proceedings of the 2006 International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing
Conference, pp. 997-100, 2006
[6] C. Berrou and A. Glavieux, Near optimum error correcting coding and decoding:
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