Jurnal Elektronika dan Telekomunikasi (JET), Vol. 17, No. 2, December 2017, pp. 48-55 Accredited by RISTEKDIKTI, Decree No: 32a/E/KPT/2017 doi: 10.14203/jet.v17.48-55 Tracking System for Indoor TV Antenna Based on CVBS Signal Processing Herti Miawarni a,* , M. Mahaputra Hidayat a , Surya Sumpeno b , Eko Setijadi b a Departement of Engineering Faculty Bhayangkara Surabaya University Jl. Ahmad Yani 114 - 60231 Surabaya, Indonesia b Departement of Electrical Engineering Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS) Jl. Arief Rahman Hakim, Kampus Keputih, Sukolilo – 60111 Surabaya, Indonesia Abstract Analog terrestrial TV is still a popular choice for urban societies although the migration to digital system has already begun. Video quality of analog TV was heavily influenced by antenna performance. Most users prefer to use indoor antenna due to its simplicity. The disadvantage of this type of antenna is the users may need to change the antenna direction repeatedly when they change to different TV channel. In this research, we designed and developed tracking system that enables indoor TV antenna to adjust its direction automatically to get optimum video clarity. This system is built by several servo motors and telescopic antennas. Composite Video Baseband Signal (CVBS) processing is used to obtain reference information regarding video clarity level conditions on TV screen. The results show that CVBS signal processing has performance in describing video clarity level. System performance has been verified from trial results on some UHF channels. The minimum tracking time was 23.4 seconds and the maximum tracking time was 24.6 seconds. Keywords: antenna tracking system, analog TV, telescopic antenna, servo motor, CVBS signal. I. INTRODUCTION Television has become an essential device in our daily life as a source of information and entertainment. To date, television broadcasting typically uses an analog system. Even though television broadcasting system already began to migrate to a digital system [1], most of the TV consumers still continue to use the existing analog TV devices. The quality and clarity of video on analog TV broadcast depends on the environment. With the fact that TV signals are highly directional, the antenna should be pointed precisely at the transmitting antenna to get the strongest received signal. Using an outdoor antenna brings better video clarity. However, the establishment and adjustment of such an outdoor antenna are difficult. Thus, many users prefer to use indoor antenna that is certainly more practical physically and the position can be set anytime. Telescopic antenna is one of the many types of indoor TV antenna that is often used by society. The advantages of this antenna are lightweight, cheap and has a lot of angle variations. Telescopic Antenna was proposed for portable DVB-T TV [2] - [3]. Although indoor antenna is easy to use, the antenna direction and the receiving angle may need to be manually adjusted by the user. If the user wants to watch other TV program, then the antenna adjustment must be repeated. In our previous work [4], an antenna tracking system that automatically rotates antenna direction to get optimum video clarity had been developed. Servo motors were used as antenna rotators. In [5], Servo motors are used in the tracking antenna system for satellite TV reception on boats. Furthermore, in [6], servo motors have also been employed for characteristic configuration of antennas radiation pattern. For the case of analog TV, the information regarding video clarity level can be utilized as reference parameters for antenna tracking system. Video clarity information can be obtained from the comparison of luminance and chrominance signals to noise [7], using mathematical analysis like MSE (Mean Squared Error) and PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio) as fidelity metrics [8], or using mathematical analysis like Sobel filtering, Laplace filtering, fast Fourier transforms [9]. However, all of the previous proposed methods are highly complex in process. In [4], [10] - [12], Composite Video Baseband Signal (CVBS) is used to obtain video clarity information by calculating rising transition between synchronization level and blanking level. This method is simple and can be applied to microcontroller with low computational capability. CVBS signal usually available on the TV rear panel, particularly on the AV-Out connection. The purpose of this research is to develop tracking system for indoor TV antenna. Telescopic antenna is used for analog TV receiver. Different from previous * Corresponding Author. Email: herti_mia@ubhara.ac.id Received: October 10, 2017 ; Revised: December 21, 2017 Accepted: December 27, 2017 ; Published: December 30, 2017  2017 PPET - LIPI