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The introduction of digital video broadcast – terrestrial (DVB-T) digital television has impacted television reception in automotive entertainment systems. Now, in addition to being able to receive analog television signals, which will still be broadcast outside metropolitan areas for years to come, an automotive TV receiver must now also be able to process DVB-T signals as well. Hirschmann Electronics has developed an Altera FPGA-based “hybrid TV receiver” to meet this emerging need. The new hybrid receiver has also been equipped with improved diversity algorithms for better quality analog reception. All the digital signal processing, including antenna diversity of analog video and sound, baseband sound processing, Teletext decoding and other data content such as Video Program System (VPS), managing and storing this information in the connected SDRAM memory, and communicating with the control host via a serial interface, is carried out in an Altera Cyclone FPGA. In addition to its logic and arithmetical functions, the RAM blocks in the Cyclone FPGA are also used for functions such as FIFO storage. The designers of Hirschmann’s receiver leveraged Altera’s development tools to create complex units required to support system functions. The finite impulse response (FIR) filters, for example, were automatically generated using the Altera FIR compiler, and a controller system was produced using the SOPC Builder tool. This controller unit consists of the Nios embedded processor as well as RAM, a serial interface, and an SDRAM controller. "Cyclone FPGAs and the Nios processor play a crucial role in our Hybrid Car-TV Receiver that combines analog and digital video broadcast reception capability. Cyclone FPGAs provide us with an affordable solution for implementing the DSP functions required for TV reception, and the availability of multipliers in Cyclone II makes Altera's low-cost FPGAs even more attractive for signal processing applications. The Nios processor enabled us to avoid using an off-the-shelf processor, which saves us development cost, board space, and engineering time. Further, Altera's SOPC Builder enabled us to easily construct the exact Nios processor we needed to perform antenna control functions, and with the Nios II processor, we look forward to achieving even greater performance and improved resource efficiency." Dr. Dirk Wendt |
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