Fast development of digital broadcasting

Product: DAB and DVB-T modulators
TI DSP: TMS320C54x
Third party: M.B. International
Success achieved: Low cost, flexibility and superior performance    enabling rapid, cost-effective development of DAB and DVB-T    modulators.

In 1997, M.B. International was asked to develop on a very short schedule two modulators, one for the Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) standard, and the other for DVB-T, the European standard for broadcasting MPEG2 digital video.

The DAB modulator was developed for Nuova Elit. The DVB-T modulator was created for Elettronica Industriale.

Both implementations had to be flexible in order to follow future changes of the standards. Since the two standards employ a similar mix of algorithms, M.B. International was able to develop them in parallel on the same high-performance engine.

The company chose an array of TMS320LC548 DSPs to implement its solutions, with 17 of the devices required for DVB and seven for DAB. Using a large number of DSPs allowed M.B. International to split the development into several small tasks so that when an item of code needed to be changed, the developers did not have to retest the whole application.

Only five months after starting development, M.B. International had a complete DVB system working. One month later, DAB was ready to demonstrate in a live broadcast, showing how easy it is to program complex algorithms on a ’C54x DSP.

The total cost of the silicon on the board turned out to be only a fraction of the cost of competing products. Eventually, the TMS320C6201 served to reduce device counts, but low cost, speed of development, flexibility, size and superior performance all helped the development team make the most of the ’C548.