A comparison of 64-QAM and 16-QAM DVB-T under long echo delay multipath conditions

In 2002, the commercial digital terrestrial television service in the United Kingdom had a technological revival. Since it´s first broadcast in 1998, there have been a number of reception issues concerning digital video broadcasting - terrestrial (DVB-T). As a result, the modulation method has changed in order to maximize the coverage and minimize errors. The consequence of changing the modulation method to a more robust system is that the overall throughput must suffer. Therefore, a trade-off between throughput and robustness must be made. This paper gives the detail of the results of experiments performed to ascertain the justification of changing the modulation method in DVB-T compliant system from 64-QAM to 16-QAM when transmitted at radio frequencies (RF) when subjected to multipath with long path delays as is normal in a single frequency network (SFN).