WASHINGTON—The Advanced Television Systems Committee announced today that the Physical Layer transmission system for ATSC 3.0 next-generation television broadcasting has been approved as a Final Standard, signaling that the standardization process for the entire ATSC 3.0 technology platform is nearing completion. ATSC members approved the ATSC 3.0 Physical Layer Candidate Standard through balloting completed yesterday.

“The hundreds of technology experts from around the world who have contributed their time and expertise to this process have selected the best and most flexible transmission system as the foundation of ATSC 3.0. While other ingredients of the ATSC 3.0 standard are still in the final stages of standardization, the approval of the over-the-air transmission system is a foundation for the future,” said ATSC President Mark Richer.

According to the ATSC, the 3.0 Physical Layer, described in A/322, offers far more flexibility, robustness and spectral efficiency than the current digital TV broadcast standard, which was approved by the Federal Communications Commission two decades ago. The new ATSC 3.0 Physical Layer allows television broadcasters to choose from a variety of transmission parameters so that each station can tailor its signal to best serve its local market by providing the combination of services and coverage area best suited for the market and its terrain.

“We’re likely to see both 4K Ultra HD broadcasts running side-by-side with robust mobile broadcasts to handheld devices, thanks to the innate flexibility of ATSC 3.0’s Physical Layer. The system will allow high-capacity modes when stunning video is more important. And it also permits lower-capacity transmissions with extremely high robustness for receivers on the go,” Richer said.

Key capabilities of the ATSC 3.0 Physical Layer include use of Single Frequency Networks, multiple physical layer pipes, and channel bonding. Selected technologies allow for data transmission with a wide range of guard intervals, forward error correction code lengths and code rates.

The ATSC said final approval of the A/322 Physical Layer standard reflected the momentum behind next-gen TV. Work continues apace on the other elements of the suite of ATSC 3.0 standards. In March of this year, the A/321 System Discovery and Signaling (the “bootstrap”) part of the Physical Layer was standardized, and a number of other ATSC 3.0 standards are nearing the conclusion of the standardization process. (See, “First Element of ATSC 3.0 Approved for Standard,” March 28, 2016.)

These Proposed and Candidate Standards will include Video and Audio Compression, high dynamic range, wide color gamut and immersive sound, closed captioning, advanced emergency alerting, security, companion devices, personalization, applications and interactivity, watermarking and fingerprinting, and Internet Protocol delivery.

All told, some 20 standards are expected to be part of the final ATSC 3.0 suite of standards by early next year.

For more on ATSC 3.0, see our coverage silo.

SHANGHAI, CHINA —History was made here last month as a multinational group of television engineers gathered to perform systems compatibility testing of the ATSC 3.0 digital TV standard. The event, officially dubbed “Plug Fest 2015,” was hosted by China’s National Engineering Research Center of Digital Television (NERC-DTV), Oct. 19-23.

The engineers were convened “to confirm a common understanding of the ATSC 3.0 specifications A/321, A/322 and other relevant standards, and/or working drafts,” according to the Advanced Television Systems Committee, the U.S.-based organization tasked with developing the next-gen broadcast standard.

(A/321 is the standard’s signal discovery and signaling layer and A/322 is its physical layer. In September, A/322 was elevated from “document” status to “candidate standard” and A/321 underwent a similar change in status earlier this year. These elevations signified that specifications were sufficiently in place for construction of hardware and software devices to generate and demodulate the specialized DTV signal.)

The event also included an ATSC 3.0 Bootcamp held at Shanghai’s International Convention Center, which updated attendees on ATSC 3.0’s progress and potential for delivering a high quality television experience. The day-long conference featured keynotes on various aspects of ATSC 3.0 from a number of individuals working closely with the project and attracted more than 150 individuals from some 10 nations.

MAJOR STEP FORWARD

L to R: Lachlan Michael, Lynn Claudy, Glenn Reitmeier, Richard Friedel, Kim Jong Gyu and Mark Richer

The Plug Fest testing is seen as a significant milestone in moving the standard ahead to its 2017 targeted completion date. It was also important because it allowed participating transmitter and receiver companies to exercise a large number of parameters and options designed into the standard, thus proving its flexibility and commercial viability.

ATSC President Mark Richer traveled to China along with several other ATSC board members to witness the testing, and was elated with the results. “It was a defining and historical event,” he said. “For me it was not as much about the technology as it was about the collaboration. I think we’ll always remember the incredible cooperation between organizations to make the Plug Fest a reality and to make it successful.”

Lachlan Michael, chair of the ATSC’s S32-2 modulation and coding group, and coordinator of the Shanghai testing event was also pleased with the outcome.

“I would rate it very much a success,” he said. “We had 150 parameter sets that we defined for this Plug Fest and we managed to get through all of those parameters during the week of testing. We achieved all the goals we set out to achieve, we’ve got people talking to each other, we’ve got people working getting more people excited about ATSC 3.0, and we’re just looking forward to the next time when we can get together and show even more features operational.”

Dr. Richard Chernock, chairman of the ATSC Technology Group (TG3) addresses the ATSC Boot Camp, which was held in conjunction with the Plug Fest.

LOW-KEY EVENT Testing took place in a temporary laboratory facility set up by NERC-DTV that measured approximately 30x60-feet. It was filled with workstations occupied by Plug Fest participants Sony, Enensys, Samsung, DekTec, Teamcast, NERC, and Korea’s ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute). Despite the importance of the outcome and the intensity of those participating, the overall atmosphere was surprisingly low-key and subdued.

There were no tall racks, flashing lights, or alarms going off —just assemblages of PCs and relatively small prototyping setups replete with power supplies and an abundance of programmable logic arrays. The comparative silence was broken only occasionally by Michael when he called out in his clear and distinctive Australian accent for testing participants to shift to another mode of operation. All in all, some 70 pages of testing program documents were worked through by the group. Despite the great significance of what was being accomplished there, an outsider who wandered in would only think that he or she had entered a college computer lab.

When Michael announced that testing was at an end, there were no champagne toasts or “high-fives,” just contented smiles on the faces of all those present as they began to break down and pack up their gear. And despite the apparent success achieved, Michael was careful to note that there was still a lot more work ahead for both the ATSC and companies working with the organization in developing the new broadcast standard.

“What we’ve done in this Plug Fest is implement part of the standard,” Michael said. “We haven’t implemented all of the features. Obviously it’s not a complete system yet and there were some issues found on both the modulator and demodulator side, but I think we can say that there were multiple demodulators and multiple modulators that worked for every single combination.”

[The completed standard will also include additional layers and elements addressing such items as synchronization, video and audio standards, A/V content watermarking, delivery signaling captioning and subtitling of content, user personalization, service announcements and more.]

The two-day ATSC Plug Fest in Shanghai attracted a number of distinguished television engineers from around the world.
Plug Fest Also Demonstrates LDM

A specially equipped van offered Plug Fest attendees a real-world demonstration of the capabilities of ATSC 3.0.

Layered division multiplex (LDM) is a very recent development in the evolution of the ATSC 3.0 DTV standard and will provide broadcasters with the ability to control over-the-air signal characteristics to favor different types of viewing devices and environments. An extremely robust signal—but with resolution tailored for portable handheld devices—can be transmitted, while at the same time a very high quality content stream—but without the enhanced robustness—can be sent to large screen HD displays in less challenging (fixed) environments.

So far, LDM demonstrations have been mostly confined to laboratory environments. However, a real-world demonstration of the technology’s capabilities was offered to participants at ATSC’s Shanghai Plug Fest. An equipment package constructed by ETRI engineers and fitted into an NERC-DTV van was used to dynamically demonstrate LDM’s capabilities. The package included a spectrum analyzer and a prototype ATSC 3.0 receiver which broke out LDM “upper” and “lower” layers. The upper, more robust, signal was routed to a small tablet and the higher-quality lower layer output was fed to a large screen HD display. A signal was provided from a low-power (40 Watt) UHF transmitter with the transmitting antenna located several stories above ground level.

An equipment package constructed by ETRI engineers and fitted into the NERC-DTV van was used to dynamically demonstrate LDM’s capabilities.

Once the van started moving around the NERC-DTV complex, the received RF signal level rather predictably began to vary. Initially, both displays provided stable images; however, as the van began to move in Shanghai traffic and around high-rise buildings, signal variations became more extreme. Video on the large-screen monitor alternately froze or disappeared completely; however, the tablet picture remained stable throughout the several kilometer path followed by the van, providing a dynamic and convincing indication that LDM really works.
James O’Neal

Michael said that he anticipated additional testing events as additional portions of ATSC 3.0 reached candidate status and this was echoed by Richer. “I think there’ll be more industry Plug Fests of the physical layer and also the other layers and I think they’ll all be big events,” he said. “There are also going to be companies working privately doing their own internal tests with different products. There’s a lot we won’t see, but we’ll know what’s going on because we’ll hear about the different issues that are identified as those events move forward.”

Richer also praised the assistance and cooperation received from the NERC-DTV group and others in connection with the testing.

“They did a really fabulous job,” said Richer. “It was just amazing the amount of resources the NERC-DTV put into the testing.”

MULTICOUNTRY MISSION

The Shanghai Plug Fest marked the final stop for Richer and others associated the ATSC. He described visits in Japan and Korea that were part of the association’s “Far East” mission.

“Japan was our first stop and we met with our colleagues at NHK and it was a wonderful meeting,” said Richer. “ATSC has worked with NHK for a long time and NHK has been a big contributor to the development of ATSC 3.0. We were happy to go to Japan and hear about their plans. NHK is really focused on 8K satellite and cable transmission and reception, so that’s really going to be moving things forward in terms of technology in a few years. We’re focused more on terrestrial delivery of 4K, but there is a lot of collaboration between the NHK team and the others in ATSC. We also met with Sony to talk about their plans and to thank them for their efforts. Sony has really shown a lot of leadership in the development ATSC 3.0.”

Reflecting on the ATSC’s visit to Korea, Richer said, “we have a very good relationship of course with many organizations in Korea. Korea adopted the ATSC 1.0 standard and has developed a lot of technology for that standard. They’ve made a lot of contributions to ATSC 3.0. Samsung, LG and ETRI, as well as others in Korea have been working hard to make ATSC 3.0 a success. The focus in Korea is getting on the air with ATSC 3.0 and being able to provide 4K services during the 2018 Olympics in Seoul, so they are very focused on their goal of getting on the air with ATSC 3.0. At this point it’s very likely that Korea will have the first commercial broadcasts services in ATSC 3.0, and we will work with them to make sure that that becomes a reality.”

James O’Neal is a retired broadcast engineer and current technology advisor forTV Technology.

SEOUL and WASHINGTON—(LG statement added 5:31 p.m. ET) Samsung and LG are among the companies that contributed technologies to the broadcast transmission scheme elevated this morning to Candidate Standard status by the Advanced Television Systems Committee for ATSC 3.0, its advanced TV distribution methodology. The “Physical Layer”—the foundation of the full ATSC 3.0 standard now in development—was announced as a Candidate Standard today.

According to The Korea Times, Samsung contributed“ low density parity check (LDPC) and non-uniform check (NUC)” technology. LDPC is said to restore video data lost during transmission, and NUC “optimizes high-quality video to fit different transmission environments,” the news outlet said.

“Based on the adoption of our technologies as candidate standards, we pledge to lead the development of generic technologies required for next-generation UHD broadcasting by pushing for cooperation with broadcasters in Korea and the United States,” Kim Chang-yong, head of the Samsung DMC Research and Development Center, told The Korea Times.

In a statement issued after the initial publication of this article, LG Electronics senior vice president and president of Zenith R&D Labs, Dr. Jong Kim, said LG contributed a “majority” of the technology to the Physical Layer Candidate Standard.

“LG technology is behind the majority of the elements of the Physical Layer transmission system. In fact, our technology is part of at least 10 of the 15 building blocks of the new Candidate Standard,” he said.

LG said its contributions cover the scrambler, forward error correction, bit interlever, mapper, MIMO, time interleaver, OFDM framer, frequency interleaver, pilot and tone reserve and guard interval.

For its part, Samsung also was integral in the development of the so-called “bootstrap signal” portion of the standard that was elevated to Candidate Standard status last May. ( See “ATSC 3.0 Bootstrap Signal Becomes Candidate Standard.”) Sinclair Broadcasting Group and the members of the Pearl TV station consortium were also involved in the development and testing of the bootstrap technology that is now part of the physical layer Candidate Standard, according to ONE Media, Sinclair’s venture partner.

“The features of the approved Physical Layer include many of those developed by ONE Media and supported by other broadcasters and equipment manufacturers including notably the Pearl TV consortium of broadcast companies and the largest global television manufacturer, Samsung,” Arlington, Va.-based ONE Media said in a statement.

“This is a significant milestone in the adoption of a revolutionary advancement in broadcast technology,” stated Mark Aitken, Vice President for Advanced Technology with Sinclair Broadcast Group, ONE Media’s venture partner, in the same statement. “By voting to send all aspects of the Physical Layer to Candidate Standard, the ATSC has validated our long-held vision of an IP-based, robust, mobile, dynamic and adaptable transmission standard, allowing us to thrive in the vast ocean of the Internet. We congratulate the ATSC for remarkably quick progress in moving us forward.”

ONE Media described the Physical Layer technology as follows:
“The Physical Layer is the essential core of the new ATSC 3.0 standard and serves as the universal entry point that allows all receiver devices to process and decode information. Using the new standard, broadcasters will now be able to provide robust, mobile, ultra-high definition video and enhanced, immersive audio with geo-targeted programming and advertising, advanced emergency alert functions and single frequency networks to help preserve repeater and translator service. Importantly, it also allows broadcasters to innovate with new non-programming opportunities including everything from distance learning, industry-specific mass data distribution and the backbone of the Internet of Things.”

ONE Media said that with the elevation of the Physical Layer technology to ATSC Candidate Standard, manufacturers can now start designing to the 3.0 standard.

“This includes portable tablets, home gateway devices and new transmitters.”

TV Technology has a pending inquiry with ATSC for further information on the Candidate Standard and the continuing process.

Also see...
September 21, 2015
“ATSC 3.0 Tested With 4K, Mobile in Korea by LG, SBS”
Korean broadcaster SBS partnered with LG Electronics for the country's first live over-the-air broadcast of 4K Ultra HD signals using technologies behind the ATSC 3.0 TV broadcast standard.

September 2, 2015
“Voting on ATSC 3.0 Physical Layer Standard Begins“
Ballots were sent out on Aug. 31 and over the next four weeks members of the TG3 Technology Group will vote on whether to approve or not approve the Physical Layer to Candidate Standard status.

May 15, 2015
“Samsung and ONE Media Drive ATSC 3.0 Candidate Standard“
Samsung and ONE Media proposed a hierarchical framework comprised of the ‘bootstrap,’ preamble and data framing to meet broadcasters unique requirements.

May 7, 2015
“ATSC 3.0 Bootstrap Signal Becomes Candidate Standard“
The first of five components in the Physical Layer transmission standard for ATSC 3.0 has been elevated to “Candidate Standard” status.

August 27, 2013
“TV Tomorrow: ATSC 3.0 Advances”
The ATSC announced that 10 proposals have been submitted for the foundation of 3.0 known as the “physical layer.” This physical layer includes the modulation scheme, which defines how the signal information is carried by a radio frequency—in this case, the TV channel.

March 28, 2013
“ATSC Seeks Next-Gen TV Physical Layer Proposals”
It appears some of the requirements could be a bit of a stretch, but that may not be such a bad idea, considering that ATSC 3.0 will be replacing a terrestrial DTV standard that’s survived for 15 years.

March 27, 2013
“ATSC Seeks Proposals for ATSC 3.0 Physical Layer”
Glenn Reitmeier, ATSC chairman, noted that, “the ATSC 3.0 effort is a crucial time for broadcasters, professional equipment manufacturers, consumer device manufacturers and all stakeholders to collaborate and create the future capabilities of over-the-air broadcasting.”

February 22, 2013
“HPA 2013: ATSC 3.0 Update”
The current standard was developed 20 years ago and implemented around 15 years ago. The Internet was on baby legs, processor speeds were measured in megahertz, storage in megabytes, and networks in kilobytes.

January 22, 2013
“New ATSC Implementation Teams to Focus on Commercialization of ATSC 2.0 and M-EAS”
The Advanced Television Systems Committee has formed new Implementation Teams for two new emerging standards -- ATSC 2.0 and the Mobile Emergency Alert System.

February 15, 2012,
“HPA Tech Retreat: The State of ATSC 2.0”
ATSC 2.0 will provide a variety of interactive capabilities to broadcasters not now available.

September 6, 2011
“New ATSC 3.0 Technology Group Formed To Anticipate TV of the Future
ATSC 3.0 is anticipated to be a series of voluntary technical standards and recommended practices for the next digital terrestrial television broadcast system.