Prediction and measurement of bit error rates in COFDM single frequency networks

For the digital terrestrial transmission scheme Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) and Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB-T), the prediction of the Bit Error Rate (BER) for a specific reception area is a characteristic variable. State-of-the-art methods to determine the BER for Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (COFDM) are either restricted to some typical propagation scenarios with simple echo profiles or they use general statistic channel models, which allow an analytical derivation of the BER. These methods and scenarios are suitable to investigate the general system behavior or to simulate different competing transmission schemes. For radio network planning they are not appropriate. This is mainly due to the very general results, which have no direct link to the actual propagation situation. Based on detailed qualitative and quantitative investigations of all relevant disturbance factors for DAB and DVB-T, this paper presents a new and very fast BER calculation method, which uses the results of wave propagation prediction models. The approach is verified by measurements in the L-band in an operational DAB network.