A comparison on VSB and COFDM used in HDTV terrestrial broadcasting

There is a worldwide impact to the TV broadcasting and consumer electronics industries starting from the decision of the FCC, of which the transition period of SDTV to digital will be completed in the year of 2006. The digital television era seems to be arriving earlier than that has ever been expected. How to face the challenge of this new era is a serious concern of the industries at present. The VSB transmission system is accepted for terrestrial broadcasting of DTV in the US. As a counterpart, the COFDM system is accepted for DVB. It is natural of interested to investigate these two transmission schemes and compare the performance and the methods of implementation. The simulation results of their performance are presented and a comparison of the hardware implementations is included.