Development of Macrodiversity Reception System and Its Use in Mobile Relay Broadcast Program

Abstract

We are conducting research on a wireless link system that is capable of achieving high link reliability over a wide area for use in mobile relay broadcast programs such as road races. For such systems to be feasible, we developed a macrodiversity reception system using many distributed remote antennas and radio-over-fiber links. Our receiver combines four diversity branches with good signal quality based on the minimum mean square error (MMSE) algorithm. We describe the MMSE weight vector calculation using fixed-point operation for hardware implementation, prototyping of a macrodiversity receiver, and its use in an actual mobile relay broadcast program. Our system was used as a terrestrial reception system of high-definition videos shot from a motorcycle in the Kyoto Ekiden relay race, and achieved highly stable transmission without outage for half the course.