Extraction of radio frequency quality metric from digital video broadcast streams by cable using software defined radio

Abstract: The purpose of this master thesis was to investigate how effiecient the extractionof radiofrequency quality metrics from digital video broadcast (DVB) streamscan become using software defined radio. Software defined radio (SDR) is a fairlynew technology that offers you the possibility of very flexible receivers and transmitters where it is possible to upgrade the modulation and demodulation overtime. Agama is interested in SDR for use in the Agama Analyzer, a widely deployedmonitoring probe running on top of standard services. Using SDR, Agama coulduse that in all deployments, such as DVB by cable/terrestrial/satellite (DVBC/T/S), which would simplify logistics. This thesis is an implementation of a SDR to be able to receive DVB-C. TheSDR must perform a number of adaptive algorithms in order to prevent the received symbols from being significantly different from the transmitted ones. Themain parts of the SDR include timing recovery, carrier recovery and equalization.Timing recovery performs synchronization between the transmitted and receivedsymbols and the carrier recovery performs synchronization between the carrierwave of the transmitter and the local oscillator in the receiver. The thesis discusses various methods to perform the different types of synchronizations andequalizations in order to find the most suitable methods.