Abstract

MENA VALDES, Ana Ivis; MOREJON BETANCOURT, Dreyelian; CABRERA ALVAREZ, Rufino Reydel  and  HERNANDEZ SANCHEZ, Yosmany. Digital television signal monitoring by scanning channels using the Set Top Box SDP160. EAC [online]. 2020, vol.41, n.2, pp.30-38.  Epub Aug 01, 2020. ISSN 1815-5928.

Currently in LACETEL®, Research and Development Telecommunications Institute, has been developed a solution for monitoring the radio spectrum in commercial television bands. To achieve this goal, the deployment of a set of geographically distributed sensors is planned, in order to perform periodic sweeps of the spectrum, measuring the fundamental parameters of the detected signal and sending them to a central node for its management and processing. One of the alternative ways to implement the sensors consists in modifying the basic functionalities of commercial receivers, and so adapt their operation to the requirements of the solution. The receiver, transformed into a measuring instrument, is able to sweep the radioelectric spectrum, detecting specific parameters for each sensed channel and sending them through a communication interface. In a previous development in our Institute, the SOYEA SDP160 receiver was modified to monitor the signal/noise ratio and signal level parameters of a digital television channel and store the information into a removable storage device. Starting from this development, the present work describes the modification to the channels search function in the firmware implementing its automatic execution at periodic time intervals and suppressing any inner processing of transport stream structure. By implementing these modifications, the tool gets better suited for performing a periodic monitoring of the spectrum and the time intervals associated to each swept are conveniently reduced. The measured values are sent to the serial port for later processing. Tests performed in laboratory conditions are explained to evaluate the performance of the implemented algorithms, exposing the obtained results.

Keywords : Digital Television; Scan; Radioelectric spectrum; Set Top Box; Signal level; Signal/noise ratio.

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