Enhanced ATSC DTV channel estimation

ATSC standard is the digital television (DTV) standard in the North America and was developed by the Advanced Television Systems Committee. ATSC uses the maximal length pseudo-random number (PN) sequences and a correlator in order to estimate the transmission channel between the transmitter and the receiver. Conventionally, the PN511 sequence is used to estimate the channel impulse responses. In this paper, we present the performance of an enhanced channel estimation method by the application of the compound PN sequence, which is the combination of one PN511 and three PN63 sequences. The numerical results of the laboratory measurements show a good improvement in the estimation performance of the compound PN sequence over the conventional PN511 sequence. The new estimated channel impulse responses possess a lower noise floor level than the previously estimated channel impulse responses.