Channel coding for digital HDTV terrestrial broadcasting

In order to transmit the HDTV signal in 6 MHz, the four United States digital HDTV proponents, the DigiCipher, DSC-HDTV, ADTV and ATVA-P systems, are reducing the video data rate of HDTV to 15-17 Mb/s, a compression ratio of approximately 60-70 times. The high compression dictates that channel coding be used to avoid block errors and multiframe error propagation. High efficiency in channel utilization required by the 6-MHz limitation means that the channel must be properly equalized and that the multipath and interfering signals must be severely limited. The channel coding techniques used for error reduction include data interleaving, error detection and replacement, and error correction at different levels of protection for bits and blocks of unequal importance