BOULDER, Colo.—Public Media Group (PMG) has formed an alliance with American Tower to accelerate deployment of turnkey Single Frequency Networks (SFNs) to support commercial and noncommercial broadcasters as they roll out ATSC 3.0 services. 

The companies will work together building out the SFNs. PMG will own, operate and manage the SFN infrastructure with the goal of enabling broadcasters to maximize NextGen TV revenue, deliver quality content and enhanced data services to consumers, PMG said.

The shared infrastructure SFN deployment model offers broadcasters economic benefits, including increased signal density and coverage and capacity improvements for their networks. Installation is more cost effective with shared infrastructure, and it can reduce ongoing operations and maintenance costs, PMG said.

PLUS: American Tower Completes Construction Of Dallas ATSC 3.0 SFN

“PMG is committed to designing and operating infrastructure that maximizes opportunities for all broadcasters, and through our alliance with American Tower, we will be better positioned to rapidly deliver the promise of ATSC 3.0 and Single Frequency Networks to communities across the country,” said PMG CEO Joe Chinnici. 

PMG will evaluate all relevant towers when deploying an SFN for a DMA-based or statewide network. The alliance will afford PMG greater access to American Tower’s best positioned tower sites for improved coverage and speed to market in large, mid-size and rural networks.

“We look forward to working with PMG to utilize our 40,000-plus tower sites for potential SFN deployments nationwide,” said Steve Vondran, President of U.S. Tower, a division of American Tower Corporation.

“With our experience working on commercial SFN deployments and test trials, our knowledge complements PMG’s mission to fully manage and operate the underlying infrastructure, so broadcasters have confidence in enhancing their signal coverage and capacity improvements to better reach their audience.”

American Tower will work with PMG to provide site development services, including network RF design support, program management, zoning, permitting and complete RF installation and construction services. American Tower will also engage its national operations and maintenance organization and leverage its national Backup Power program to harden the network on American Tower sites.

More information is available on the PMG website.

RAYMOND, Maine—Two Dielectric stacked antenna arrays with Adaptive Polarization Technology (APT) are on their way to American Tower for use in Dallas and Boston as part of the FCC-mandated TV spectrum repack, the company announced today.

APT enables broadcasters sharing an antenna array to select their own polarization ratio regardless of what other stations operating on the same array choose to do. Adding a vertical component improves reception of both ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 signals.

“Most antennas of this nature require that the polarization ratio is defined and locked in upfront,” said Dielectric VP of sales Jay Martin.

However, the arrays destined for American Tower are anchored by Dielectric’s TUM-APT series UHF panel antennas for the vertical real estate company’s master antenna TV station clients, while customized antennas for other stations are on top of the stack.

“The TUM-APT panel antenna offers our customers an enormous advantage by allowing for polarization ratio changes inside the transmitter room. And while these arrays are optimized for ATSC 3.0 broadcasting in the future, they will provide increased power density to improve indoor reception for today’s ATSC 1.0 broadcasts,” said Martin.

A dual-channel, center-fed elliptically polarized TFU series UHF array for KUVN-DT and KSTR-DT tops the stack in the Dallas setup, while the Boston installation for WGBY-DT adds a circularly polarized TDM series VHF array above the TUM-APT, according to Dielectric.

The design of the stacked arrays offers improved azimuth pattern performance when compared to traditional main and side-mount antennas, which can disrupt the azimuth pattern and cause reception problems due to the tower, the company said.

Stacking the arrays enables them to be top-mounted and unencumbered by the tower, eliminating tower scattering effects and allowing for a stronger, interference-free pattern, the company said. The TUM-APT design also locates the transmission line for the top-mount inside the mast, eliminating distortions to the azimuth pattern associated with locating the line outside the mast as is traditional.

Following the installation of a TUM-APT panel antenna, station engineers have the ability to optimize antenna polarization in the combiner room with no modifications to the antenna required, Dielectric said.

This feature is well suited for stations wishing to use the TUM-APT with horizontal polarization today but planning to add elliptical or circular polarization in the future to support signal delivery to mobile devices under ATSC 3.0, it added.

The antennas headed to American Tower have the bandwidth and high-power handling capability to accommodate more stations and their specific polarization needs in the future, the company said.

The TUM-APT structure is designed to support the weight of stacking an additional array on top due to splines designed to support both arrays from a single installation point. Both antennas are designed to be lifted by helicopter to expedite installation. The antennas are due to go on air in the summer, the company added.

For more information on the repack, visit TV Technology's repack silo.

DALLAS—Construction and connectivity work on the ATSC 3.0 Single Frequency Network (SFN) being installed in the Dallas-Fort Worth Designated Market Area, American Tower announced in January.

The SFN, a collaboration of American Tower, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Univision Local Media, Nexstar and Spectrum Co., consists of four existing American Tower sites located around market in both metro and suburban sites to maximize signal strength across the DMA.

“The construction phase went quite smoothly,” said Ed Tiongson, Director, Product Innovation for American Tower. “With these ATSC 3.0 deployments, it’s critical to draw on expertise to synchronize SFN towers effectively, including integrating the network components, such as antennas, transmitters, and radios for optimum signal delivery.”

[Read: Dallas ATSC 3.0 SFN Buildout Nears Completion]

The towers, electrical power, fiber network and transmitter buildings at sites in Fort Worth, Denton and Garland, Texas, were upgraded for TV. A pre-fab building was also added in Garland, and a point-to-point microwave link between the Denton and Fort Worth sites was also installed, the company said.

The work included upgrades to networking, internet exchange, fiber and data center connectivity as well as three-phase power. Comark transmitters and exciters also were added at each site, the company said.

The main transmission tower site in Cedar Hill, Texas –currently the main 1.0 transmission site—received an upgrade of ATSC 3.0 transmission equipment, rounding out the four-site SFN, American Tower said.

With the 3.0 SFN infrastructure in place, validation testing of RF design and link budget will begin. Evaluating operational workflows is also on tap. “Once the RF measurements are validated, we will be able to scale for additional sites in the future as business needs dictate,” said Jim Leifer, Senior Manager, Broadcast Operations at American Tower.

March 1 is targeted as the date the SFN will light up, said Mark Aitken, Sinclair vice president of Advanced Technology and President of ONE Media LLC, in a recent Q&A with TVTechnology.

“The holdup on this one is the MVPD notification process, and the FCC is a stickler on making sure we run out the 120 days,” said Aitken.

For comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see our ATSC3 silo.

GARLAND, TEXAS AND HUNT VALLEY, MD.—Earlier this year, TV Technology first reported on the combined effort of several broadcast related organizations, including Sinclair Broadcast Group, its ONE Media innovations division, and American Tower, in building the world’s first single frequency network (SFN) using ATSC 3.0 technology in the Dallas/Ft. Worth (DFW) television market. The plan—which was devised last fall—is to deploy the new transmission technology initially on an experimental basis, and when the last bit of data has been gleaned and reports prepared, to move forward on finalizing the SFN as a permanent component of the television delivery infrastructure for viewers in that market.

The original projection was to have the entire system operational by NAB Show, but as this is a “first initiative” there were the and “lessons learned” associated with such a pioneering venture.

However, the project continues to roll out, and a visit to one of the SFN sites in late April revealed that the physical infrastructure is almost completely in place and ready to take to the air.

Peter Starke, American Tower’s vice president of broadcast, and Jerry Folk, the company’s broadcast construction manager, hosted the tour of the Garland, Texas SFN facility and offered insight about the project.

VERY DIVERSE TRANSMISSION FACILITIES

“American Tower and Sinclair feel like this site is probably going to be typical of installations for wireless sites where you have a shelter with limited space and power,” said Folk. “We purposely picked three different types of existing tower sites for this trial installation. The tower in Garland is a small guyed tower with a 40-inch face [and home to cellular service and a low-power FM station]. There is also a 1,000-foot high 11-foot face guyed tower, [a former TV broadcast tower] in Ft. Worth, and an old 200-foot self-supporter in Denton that was originally an AT&T wireline site, built in the 1950’s [and] capable of withstanding an atomic blast.”

Folk further explained that the trial sites were also selected on the basis of electrical power available, as each has a different source, ranging from single-phase 240V to three-phase 208/120 and 480/277V supplies.

“This was a factor, as we wanted to see what might work best for the ATSC 3.0 equipment and Comark transmitters chosen for the trial, although we expect that single-phase 240V power will be the most commonly available service for SFN sites,” said Folk.

The test sites also reflect a full range of equipment containment structures.

“There’s [this pre-fab] shelter here in Garland, an existing TV transmitter building in Ft. Worth, and an old AT&T ‘bomb shelter’ with nine-inch concrete walls in Denton [Texas]. With the tower, shelter and electrical service differences, this adds up to three totally different scenarios,” said Folk. “An important element of this project [is] to define the many variables and resulting requirements to be able to anticipate needs across a wide variety of sites.”

Starke noted that all three facilities were under American Tower ownership or jurisdiction.

“We own two of them and have management rights for the third—the former WBAP-TV transmission site in Ft. Worth,” he said.

READY BY THE FOURTH

When asked about the project’s progress, Fred Baumgartner, Sinclair Broadcast Group’s director of next-generation implementation, observed that while the “brick and mortar” elements had come together nicely and on schedule, clearing regulatory hurdles and making sure all the necessary paperwork reached the right people took time.

“The transmission gear is pretty well in place,” he said, noting the Garland facility was ready for turn-on. “The Ft. Worth site installation was also just finished and that only leaves Denton.”

Baumgartner noted that of the three sites, Denton had been the most challenging.

“We encountered a zoning issue there,” he said. “We wanted to put the antenna on top of the old AT&T microwave tower, but local ordinances wouldn’t allow us to go far enough above the top deck to place an antenna there. Also, we found we’d have to run reduced power at this site to stay within the primary station’s signal contour. It even required a last-minute change in antennas.”

In commenting on the non-physical aspects of the project, Baumgartner observed that this is where “The long pole in the tent is getting the various transmission agreements in place with the stations involved and in getting notifications out to the various Multichannel Video Programming Distributors (MVPDs) involved. We have to get the message to the front line technicians, and that means we have to call these folks and speak directly to the engineering departments, as the notification that says they need to retune and make service changes goes to the front office, but usually doesn’t reach the engineers who have to make the system changes.”

Baumgartner observed that the final transmission gear should be in place in Denton by the end of June and ready to go. “Everything seems on track, and we expect to light the SFN up on the Fourth of July when we have the connectivity.”

And out of all the technical challenges encountered, lack of connectivity to the transmission sites appears to be the largest one. “We don’t have all of the fiber that’s needed in place yet,” said Baumgartner. “And that’s something you really can’t do yourself. We are putting an interim microwave system online to ensure timely connectivity.”

In elaborating on the requirement for backbone connectivity, American Tower’s Starke stressed its importance in setting up a realistic test of ATSC 3.0’s capabilities. 

A LEARNING OPPORTUNITY ON ALL FRONTS

And while this unanticipated difficulty in obtaining site connectivity seems at first to be a big hurdle, it’s almost fortuitous that it did occur, as that’s what this first implementation of a real-world ATSC 3.0 SFN is all about—a learning laboratory for determining where the hurdles are and how to head them off in other such rollouts of this technology.

American Tower’s Starke elaborated on some of the other information to be gleaned in this trial installation.

“The trial test has different facets to it; it’s not all about driving the van around and figuring out what the signal strength increase and signal strength density is, it’s also about site construction—what’s it going to cost for broadcasters to go out and build SFN sites. We’re looking at efficiencies of scale, because it’s going to be difficult and costly, especially at the beginning of the 3.0 rollout, for stations to build out SFN sites on their own. We’re looking at how you can convert existing towers—wireless towers—into broadcast towers, and a lot of wireless sites have a limited amount of land. A wireless site typically has a 100 by 100-foot compound and that’s it. Most of the wireless carriers drop in their own shelters and mechanicals, So, there’s really no infrastructure to support broadcast and we know broadcast transmission is a lot different in terms of what’s needed. That’s the other trial here—you can’t go out and build new towers all over the place. The regulatory cost on the wireless side of the business has created a lot of regulations in a lot of municipalities. One of the things that municipalities look for before they approve a new tower is whether you can collocate on an existing tower, so we have to look at that too.”

Starke also noted that such technical items as determination of optimum SFN operating power was also a checklist item.

“Sinclair and Univision haven’t filed for final ERPs yet, but there is a consulting engineer working to determine what power levels are needed,” he said. “Part of a trial is the ability to turn up and turn down ERPs. The licenses that Sinclair is filing for will improve coverage within the licensed contour as provided for by current DTS regulations. The concept here is to figure out what the optimal ERPis for each of the SFN areas to achieve a proper contribution for the individual SFNs.”

He said a preliminary determination of operational ERP has indicated it would fall in the neighborhood of 100 kW Horizontal, with approximately 30 kW additional delivered in the vertical plane.

So, what happens when all the operating points have been optimized, data collected and the final reports issued? Will the sites be dismantled and written off as just another page in TV history?

“Not so” say both Starke and Baumgartner, pointing to the very considerable amount of money and time being invested in the project. When the repack phase hits the DFW market, these sites will simply be returned for their final channel. All the SFN site components have been constructed as “All UHF Band”, and can be easily optimized for final channel assignments.

READY FOR COMPANY

As constructed, in addition to a transmitter and ATSC 3.0 encoder/exciter, there’s also a large combiner/filter network to allow multiple TV carriers to share the broadband antenna.

“We keep talking about these sites as a trial test, but we’re actually building them out to go commercial,” said Starke. “It isn’t going to be build, test, and then tear down. They will eventually go commercial. Depending on ERP or antenna input power, each could handle up to possibly 10 to 12 stations.”

He observed the initial DFW SFN trial calls for the airing of programming from Cunningham Communication’s KTXD-TV outlet (RF Ch. 46) and UniMás’s KSTR-DT (RF Ch. 48). (Sinclair has no broadcast properties in the DFW market). Starke noted that since both stations fall above the latest TV broadcast spectrum upper bound, they will be moving to lower channels (RF Ch. 34 & 23) as the nationwide repack initiative reaches the DFW market. (Interestingly, there’s another television operation mixed into the broadband antenna shared by the KTXD-TV and KSTR-DT SFN transmitters, and this one—Ch. 56 (722-728 MHz)—will not be moving as it’s owned by Dish Network, which secured this slot in the earlier 700 MHz spectrum auction.)

“These will be the stations converting to 3.0, and we’ll have a hosting station down in Cedar Hill [the principle DFW TV transmitter location] to keep their 1.0 signals on the air,” said Starke.

THE CHANGING TV BROADCAST LANDSCAPE

So, what will be the future of over-the-air television? Will the tall stick and high-power model established some 80-years ago prevail, or will broadcasting move to a low-power distributed transmission platform?

Starke thinks it will be combined set of existing tall towers augmented by smaller sites for the near future; and as American Tower now owns and maintains a large number of U.S. cellular and broadcast tower sites, one of the reasons for partnering with broadcasters in this seminal ATSC 3.0 SFN Pilot.

“People [describe] towers as wireless towers and broadcast towers, but at the end of the day, it’s what’s being operated there,” said Starke. “Here we are taking this wireless site and turning it into a broadcast tower. Part of this trial involves how you can convert existing towers—wireless sites—into broadcast towers. So that’s the other trial here—you can’t just go out and build new towers all over the place [to accommodate new broadcast operations].”

“Another thing is that back in the day, TV stations used to brag about who had the tallest tower, the highest ERP, and the largest coverage. You really don’t see that anymore. Now [with cable and satellite distribution], it’s all about distribution of content. In the future, with ATSC 3.0 it will be all about high QoS service area and advanced services.”

Starke noted another factor that may drive the future chapters in the over-the-air television operations guide.

“If you think about the industry and the role of RF engineers in this industry, we all know it’s an industry where graduates coming out of college today aren’t saying ‘hey, I want to be an RF engineer,’” said Starke. “It’s been a challenge for the last 10 years or so to find qualified staff to run transmitters. Previously, RF engineers may have been running only one transmitter in a market and now, all of a sudden, RF engineers have many transmitter sites to operate. American Tower sees this as something we may want to investigate down the road—actually providing a complete transmission service.”

Even though the current repack is playing heavy on the minds of TV station engineering and management personnel right now, a lot of industry eyes and ears will be glued on this DFW ATSC 3.0 SFN deployment project as it continues to roll out.

“We are very open to working with just about anyone and sharing what we know and learn,” remarks Baumgartner in closing. “As much as our schedules will allow, we would be happy to show broadcasters what we are doing here and at the ONE Media NextGen labs outside Baltimore.”

For a comprehensive list of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see our ATSC3 silo.

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BALTIMORE—Two months ago, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Nexstar Media Group, Univision and American Tower announced they would work together to setup an ATSC 3.0-based single frequency network in the Dallas market. Work is progressing on the SFN, which with a bit of regulatory help from the FCC should be partially lit up before next month’s NAB Show in Las Vegas.

The SFN effort is more than simply a trial of Next-Gen television, however. It is also a test of a proposed ATSC 1-to-ATSC 3.0 transition that relies on spectrum clearing, channel sharing and what may be an unprecedented level of cooperation among competing broadcasters.

Mark Aitken, vice president of Advanced Technology at Sinclair Broadcast Group, has been at the center of the rollout of this Next-Gen SFN trial. In this interview, he discusses how work on the single frequency network is progressing and how the trial will provide Sinclair with critical data that will help it achieve its goal of deploying SFNs nationwide to usher in a new era of television.

(The following is an edited transcript.)

TVTechnology:Sinclair, Nexstar and Univision, along with American Tower Corp., announced in January the joint construction and operation of an ATSC 3.0 single frequency network in Dallas. Can you bring me up to date on where the project stands?

Mark Aitken: There are three new SFN sites that will host the Next-Gen service of five local Dallas stations. We refer to this as a multi-channel, multi-tenant SFN—obviously Next-Gen-related.

We are in the process of providing a network infrastructure that ties to all of those facilities so that we have what we refer to as a Next-Gen Broadcast Operations Center. That will be a local presence that also is capable of being run from Baltimore [the home of Sinclair’s headquarters].

On a local level, we have the issue of getting the SFN up and running. First off is the main transmission site with Next-Gen, tying that into multiple SFN sites and all of the work that goes along with that, including timing and determining the proper power overlaps.

Once that is working, we must address how to operate that as a remote site. Eventually, that operation will go back to a regional center because it is envisioned that Dallas is just one of a number of DMAs that get serviced from a regional hub.

[Dallas Getting Single Frequency Network for ATSC 3.0 Deployment]

TVT:What stations will participate?

MA: The target stations—and I say target stations because all of this is subject to FCC approval—are KSTR, a UniMas station; KTSD, an independent owned by Cunningham Broadcasting; KUVN, the Univision affiliate; KDAF, the Tribune Broadcasting CW affiliate; and a fifth station, which I cannot divulge at the moment.

Two of those stations—KSTR and KTXD—will relieve themselves from their ATSC 1 activity and be hosted by the others in a channel-sharing arrangement. This is important: this channel sharing means there will be no channels lost to over-the-air viewers. None of the core channels nor the Diginets will be lost.

All five will also broadcast all of their channels—core and Diginet—as Next-Gen service on the SFN. I think that is a total of 20 channels.

TVT:That setup must put big demands on MPEG-2 encoders for the ATSC 1 side of the operation.

MA: This is a crowded field, and we need capacity for additional channels on the 1.0 stick. What that encompasses is bringing in new software-based encoders that are being optimized for a new and different level of service.

In that regard, we have a vendor with encoders that will do one HD and depending on program content five, six or seven SDs at the same time. Or, they are capable of supporting three HDs at the same time, or supporting a whole host of combinations in between.

TVT:I’ve often heard it said that getting a group of broadcasters to agree to anything is like herding cats. This Dallas arrangement seems to fly in the face of that.

MA: My emphasis in Dallas is on learning how to get along. None of this happens without participation and cooperation.

It’s about keeping that 1.0 piece whole, not impacting the consumer. Not impacting the revenue of stations and making way to fully impact the unleashing of new, future services. Those things equate to keeping the industry alive.

TVT:What is the target launch date?

MA: We are hoping to have part of the system up and running prior to NAB. I say trying to because once you figure out who your partners are for the sharing on the 1.0 side, you’ve got notification requirements and FCC filing requirements for post licensing through the commission.

If you look at what came out of the rulemaking, a secondary license gets issued for the purposes of being allowed to carry your content on another channel [channel sharing to continue 1.0 service]. And that’s further made difficult if you have a PBS non-com in that mix because of the nature of non-com rules. On top of that, the FCC form called out [in the ATSC 3.0 rulemaking that details the 1.0 hosted environment] doesn’t even exist at the moment. So, we’re working very closely with the FCC.

TVT:You’ve mentioned in the past that Sinclair wants to rollout a nationwide network of 3.0 SFNs. Will this SFN trial help you achieve that goal, and if so, how?

MA: What Dallas allows us to do is check off the list, “OK, here’s the equipment, here are the available vendors, here is the project timeline and here is the sequence of events.”

It’s a project in its own right, and it has its own timeline impacted by deliveries and acceptance and commissioning and all of those things. When you are talking about multi-channel, multi-tenant sites for SFNs, you’re building new transmission facilities.

It is really understanding what resources are available, what capitalization is required, what the interrelated services are and how they get sequenced. It is really a soup-to-nuts approach to a somewhat complicated puzzle.

By the way, what’s gone on in front of that is the actual engineering and planning of what is the nature of a properly designed single frequency network.

How do you get the coverages lined up, how do you coordinate coverage in an SFN environment versus interference? It’s all those engineering studies. It’s all those—in our case—the use of Progira software as the planning tool for understanding the nature of what the end result is going to be.

TVT:You’ve had an ongoing SFN trial in the Washington, D.C.-Baltimore corridor. What takeaways from that trial will be helpful in Dallas?

MA: What’s helpful is we understand how to synchronize and balance the propagation characteristics in that SFN, the nature of performance we need in the network. We know the nature of the components that go into that. However, we need more than a single market to understand propagation. We do propagation studies. But do they match in the real world what we have synthesized in the environment in a software program?

TVT:How will you be conducting field strength tests and other needed tests in Dallas?

MA: ONE Media will deploy its mobile lab, which is a completely outfitted van that will do every level of testing on the move, not just from fixed sites—so automated data collection on the move in a real mobile environment.

[Putting Next Gen TV to the [Full] Test]

We have to take that data and compare that against the projected data coming out of Progira and ensure that what we think we’ll get is what we’re getting. We started that process in Baltimore, but that’s just one market.

TVT:Why Dallas? Was it the fairly flat terrain?

MA: Look, it would be foolish to start with the most difficult cases and there are plenty of those. Top of mind, you have Seattle, Pittsburgh and lots of other markets. But it wasn’t chosen specifically because it is flat. There were a whole number of considerations.

We’re looking at how we would do a connected, regional service. The plans that we have made in terms of the SFN aren’t just about the Dallas-Ft. Worth market. They extend down a whole corridor and the next in line is Waco.

It also was chosen because of the availability of partners. It was chosen because Dallas is a bit of a high–tech center. It was chosen, by the way, [because] Nexstar’s home office is in Dallas.

It was chosen for a whole number of reasons, but clearly because it is reasonably tame geographically, first things first. The mantra here is crawl, walk, run.

TVT:One theoretical SFN deployment scenario that is often described is ringing the perimeter of a market with several—maybe four—SFN sites with directional antennas pointed inwards toward the big stick. I know you’ve said there will be three SFN sites, but is this the type of approach that will be taken in Dallas?

MA: Actually, it is substantially of that nature. They are not directional antennas, but they have a degree of directionality. They’re cardioids.

If you looked at the plan, you would see there is a fourth site, but it actually overlaps into the Waco market, and that’s best suited to be served by the channel structure in Waco as opposed to Dallas.

So, we know we need that in the lower side of Dallas. We’ve focused on the high population densities—the northern sort of growth patterns of that market—to light that up first.

TVT:What transmitters will be used at the SFN site and what will the ERP be?

MA: We will be using 5kW Comark solid state transmitters. The ERP will be 100kW.

TVT:Is there a target average signal strength you are trying to achieve for the market?

MA: The target signal strength is 60µv/square meter at 1.5 meters off the ground, or the typical distance off the ground a person would be holding a portable device. That’s based on a 95 percent probability service factor.

TVT:What are your plans for synchronizing the transmitters on the network?

MA: It is a matter of going out in the field, looking at the impulse response of merged transmission systems. We’ll be flexing some of the tools like TxID [ATSC 3.0’s transmitter identification signal] that allow us to identify the nature of the multiple signals being received.

We know on a map where the mating point is, if you will, of converging emissions from towers. We will go out in the field and set those up. And we’ve got GPS lock and distribution of common timing across the network. It’s actually a pretty easy process.

  [WRAL-TV Showcases Next Gen TV's Potential]  

TVT:If the GPS satellite signal were lost, is there a backup?

MA: The GPS assumes we have a running Rubidium-based clock synced. That way, you can lose satellite coverage and still have a stable clock.

It really is the case that GPS is bigger than a single SFN. You need a stable clock source that ties all of these entities together. But there are multiple ways of doing that and we will be testing other methods as well.

All the other industries that surround us do this on a day-in-day-out basis, whether it’s LTE Broadcast, DVB-T2, DTMB, go down the alphabet soup list. That’s not the difficult piece of the equation.

TVT:What about STLs? Microwave or fiber?

MA: While we have fiber to all sites, we are purposely dropping microwave into the middle of that to dissuade any concerns people may have about a mixed environment.

TVT:How important is sharing to the success of your SFN strategy?

MA: It is really important, because it is a cost share. It is also about efficiency of resource use.

The fact of the matter is I want to build an SFN and you want to build an SFN. Well, does it really make sense to deploy two different tower crews and do it sequentially? So, there are cost savings and resource savings and I would say that in the planning of that there is a level of redundancy and resiliency that gets built in by the nature of the quality of service desired.

TVT:You said ONE Media will be in the market with a specially built van taking measurements. Are there other plans for reception besides the engineering side of things—perhaps seeding the market with ATSC 3.0 receivers?

MA: Absolutely. We’ve got a number of parallel paths underway to bring to market the devices that are going to ultimately support the business. So, gateway type devices. We’ve got activities underway with a couple of proposals. A couple of the participants are actually building prototype receivers and prototype gateway devices.

We are in the process of lining up the type of launch services, but a lot of that is in the hands of Spectrum Co and John Hane [newly named president of Spectrum Co].

TVT:How much will this SFN deployment cost —or is that proprietary information?

MA: We will make public the cost when we tally it up. There won’t be any secrets here. What I will say is it is running substantially below the budget we projected. That budget was in line with projections many people have made over the last couple of years with respect to the cost of building out shared SFN sites.

TVT:Dallas is the model. But each market where you ultimately will deploy SFNs will be different. The big sticks in one case might be co-located on an antenna farm and in others they will be spread out throughout the market. So how much can you walk away with from this SFN trial that will be applicable to other markets as you deploy a nationwide network?

MA: I think the framework is 100 percent applicable. The variables inside that framework may be different. Is it three, four, five or a half dozen transmitters? That changes it. The nature of the work that has to be done on site is another variable. Is the existing tower fine, or does it need to be reinforced?

But we know these variables because all of these variables are in play in Dallas. While the specifics won’t be exactly the same, we are defining a framework of decisions that will have to be made. So, we will have a well-defined decision engine that we hope will help us deploy in virtually any market.

TVT:Is there anything else?

MA: I think the industry wishes us success and we wish great success to others in the industry that are doing their own Next-Gen implementations.

For a comprehensive list of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see our ATSC3 silo.

BOSTON & BALTIMORE—The Dallas Designated Market Area is taking its first step toward Next Gen TV with the construction of single frequency network sites to broadcast ATSC 3.0 signals via a partnership between Sinclair Broadcast Group, Nexstar Media Group, Univision Local Media and American Tower Corporation.

The agreement between the broadcasters and American Tower will create a SFN for the testing, validation and deployment of ATSC 3.0. The goal is to develop a roadmap for broadcasters and increase the speed in which Next Gen TV services can be provided to consumers. Some of the services that ATSC 3.0 is expected to bring to consumers includes improved over-the-air reception, immersive audio, deep-indoor reception, mobile reception, zoned programming/advertising, automotive services and advanced emergency alerting.

The FCC gave its approval for broadcasters to voluntarily start rolling out ATSC 3.0 in November 2017 and other cities have begun to plan deployments to test the standard, most notably Phoenix.

“With the FCC’s approval of the ATSC 3.0 standard, broadcasters are eager and ready to demonstrate its many capabilities, business opportunities and consumer benefits,” said Chris Ripley, president and CEO of Sinclair.

Speaking on the Dallas partnership, American Tower’s Steven Marshall said: “The combination of our broadcast and wireless assets, industry expertise, coupled with these three television broadcaster leaders will help to make ATSC 3.0 a reality for broadcasters.”

No timetable for the construction of these single frequency networks was given.

For a comprehensive list of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see our ATSC3 silo.

RAYMOND, MAINE—In preparation for the U.S. DTV spectrum repack that is on the horizon, American Tower Corporation recently completed a purchase for $3.9 million worth of Dielectric TFU-WB broadband, side-mount antennas. This will help create an inventory of broadband antennas for broadcasters who may need to deploy new transmission equipment as part of their new channel assignment.

The TFU-WB antenna from Dielectric is a side-mount UHF broadband pylon-type antenna that is both ATSC 3.0 and DVB-T2 ready. Dielectric claims that the TFU-WB also offers 75 percent less windload and lower overall weight than the UHF panel antennas. With a high power input, it can reportedly handle multiple stations transmission at once.

American Tower’s order includes three runs of 1,500-foot 6-inch transmission line, as well as eight runs of 1,500-foot 8-inch transmission line that will be used in conjunction with the transitional antennas.

The spectrum repack is expected to begin in the second quarter of this year.