Patent ID: 8781010
Filing Date: 2014-07-15
Classification: H03M,H04L

Abstract:
1. A receiver for parallel concatenated convolutionally coded (PCCC) mobile-handheld M/H-service data imbedded in digital television (DTV) signals also conveying main-service data, said DTV signals being transmitted as 8-level vestigial-sideband amplitude-modulated (8-VSB) radio-frequency carrier waves, said PCCC transmissions of M/H-service data intended to be received and decoded by mobile and hand-held receivers collectively referred to as M/H receivers, said DTV signals being (207, 187) Reed-Solomon coded and convolutionally interleaved before being used for 8-VSB modulation, said receiver being an M/H receiver comprising: a tuner for receiving a selected one of 8-VSB DTV signals broadcast at radio frequencies and converting it to a baseband DTV signal comprising M/H Slots of signal selected from successive data fields of convolutionally byte-interleaved 207-byte data segments; a data slicer connected for performing 8-level data slicing of successive Nyquist-rate symbols of said baseband DTV signal in said selected M/H Slots to generate a first stream of soft most significant bits (MSBs) of respective ones of said symbols of said baseband DTV signal in said selected M/H Slots, a second stream of soft Z-sub-1 bits that are of intermediate significance in regard to said respective ones of said symbols of said baseband DTV signal in said selected M/H Slots, and a third stream of soft Z-sub-0 bits that are of least significance in regard to said respective ones of said symbols of said baseband DTV signal in said selected M/H Slots; a post-comb filter unit for generating successive soft bits of post-comb filter response to said MSBs of respective ones of said symbols of said baseband DTV signal in said selected M/H Slots; and turbo decoding apparatus for decoding said parallel concatenated convolutionally coded M/H-service data contained in said baseband DTV signal, said turbo decoding apparatus comprising: a symbol de-interleaver for outer convolutional coding of said parallel concatenated convolutionally coded M/H-service data conveyed in symbol-interleaved format by said soft MSBs and said soft Z-sub-1 bits within said baseband DTV signal, thus to regenerate outer convolutional coding of said parallel concatenated convolutionally coded M/H-service data; soft-input/soft-output (SISO) decoding apparatus, said SISO decoding apparatus operable for decoding inner convolutional coding conveyed by said soft Z-sub-1 bits and said soft Z-sub-0 bits within said baseband DTV signal to generate a respective set of soft bits of M/H-service data each cycle of turbo decoding procedure, said SISO decoding apparatus further operable for decoding said regenerated outer convolutional coding of said parallel concatenated convolutionally coded M/H-service data to generate a respective set of soft bits of de-interleaved M/H-service data each cycle of turbo decoding procedure; a symbol interleaver connected for re-interleaving each of said sets of soft bits of de-interleaved M/H-service data to be processed for providing turbo feedback in said turbo decoding apparatus; a hard-data-bits selector for selecting hard bits of M/H-service data from a final set of soft bits of M/H-service data generated during each turbo decoding procedure for a respective one of said selected M/H Slots; Reed-Solomon (RS) decoding apparatus for non-systematic ones of (207, 187) Reed-Solomon codewords conveyed in convolutionally byte-interleaved format within said baseband DTV signal, said RS decoding apparatus operable for correcting erroneous ones of said non-systematic (207, 187) RS codewords insofar as possible and for indicating bits from those of said non-systematic (207, 187) RS codewords said RS decoding apparatus finds to be correct as received or was able to correct; a generator of high confidence levels to be joined with Z-sub-1 bits from those of said non-systematic (207, 187) RS codewords said RS decoding apparatus finds to be correct as received or was able to correct, thus to form respective soft Z-sub-1 bits with high confidence levels used to replace corresponding Z-sub-1 bits with lower confidence levels for subsequent decoding operations of said SISO decoding apparatus.