Developing of a practical teaching method of digital terrestrial television based on software

Communications and transmissions tend increasingly to be digital, because of this television signals are leaving transmit with analog standards. For this reason, it is important to teach and analyze the necessary information to implement the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT). In this case we are going to focus on the ATSC (Advance Television System Committee) standard, which is what Mexico has adopted. The aim of this article is to present a new method of practical teaching for the Radio-communication area in general and particularly the matter "Digital Television" so the student can understand and analyze the different stages of coding, modulation, transmission and reception of the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) through Software Defined Radio (SDR). To develop Software Defined Radio (SDR) and follow the trend towards digital transmissions, there are some devices that implement various communication protocols, including UMTS, GSM, WIFI, Bluetooth, etc. With this we have been developed projects of free software such as GNU Radio and USRP software. GNU Radio can operate as a Simulator or with the computer sound card.