Part One 

The IEEE Broadcast Technology Society (BTS) focused its attention on ATSC 3.0 Single Frequency Networks and virtualization during four sessions that kicked off its IEEE BTS Pulse online conference.

The session block examined the basics of ATSC 3.0 SFNs, virtualization of 3.0 broadcast gateways, extending the function of 3.0 SFNs by leveraging stream multiplexing to reach transmitter sites and the broadcast core network.

“ATSC 3 Single Frequency Networks and Virtualization,” chaired by Merrill Weiss, consultant and owner of Merrill Weiss Group, also included Benoit Bui Do, technical leader for terrestrial solutions at ENENSYS Technologies; Mark Corl, Triveni Digital senior vice president of Emergent Technology Development; and Ali Dernaika, solution architect at HPE America, addresses gateways, stream multiplexing and the core network, respectively. The session block was moderated by Joel Walsh, director of Education at SMPTE.

THE FUNDAMENTALS 

Weiss kicked off the event by examining the fundamentals of ATSC 3.0 and how SFNs can be used, including an explanation of the 3.0 physical layer, framing and the bootstrap, as well as several 3.0 SFN-related technologies and techniques.

Weiss then explained how the transmission characteristics of 3.0 are “about the best there are in the world in terms of the range and the proximity” to the Shannon limit—the theoretical maximum error-free data throughput for a given amount of noise on a channel.

Next he reviewed 3.0 Physical Layer Pipes, which are “essentially combinations of a number of carriers,” and times in a 3.0 subframe. “So, every one of these intersections of frequency and time, you can think of as a cell … [that] carries a certain amount of information,” he said.

The cells can be organized in different ways, enabling frequency division multiplexing, time division multiplexing, a combination of frequency and time division multiplexing and layered division multiplexing (LDM). Putting different levels of power into different layers makes it possible for LDM layers to have their own modulation encoding.

“Depending on how you choose to set the modulation encoding, you can have more or less robustness and more or less data capacity,” he said.

Weiss then discussed data sources entering a 3.0 system via the “Data Source Protocol,” which are packed into ATSC 3 Link Layer Packets (ALP) and transferred to the Broadcast Gateway where the Scheduler packs the ALP packets into PLPs. This ensures packets use available PLP space efficiently, he said.

Three transport protocols are used to get data to the transmitter—DSTP, ALPTP and STLTP (Studio-to-Transmitter Link Transport Protocol)—to enable data to be transferred between layers and guard against what’s known as “layer violations,” said Weiss. In the case of DSTP and ALPTP, this is accomplished with information available in an information header that precedes the packet. For the STLTP, this is done with an RTP (Real-time Transfer Protocol) header.

All of these protocols provide for tunneling, which enables a number of multiplex streams to be carried inside another stream. In the case of ATSC 3’s studio-to-transmitter link, there can be up to 67 different streams, all of which are treated as one stream as part of the common tunneling protocol (CTP), he said.

CTP provides for additional services like forward-error correction and security to prevent “man-in-the-middle” attacks, similar to the “Captain Midnight” attack on HBO’s delivery of its signal to cable headends several decades ago, he added. ATSC 3.0 provides for authentication and encryption to guard against such attacks.

Two types of time are provided for in ATSC 3.0. For upstream of the broadcast gateway, UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) is used. Atomic time also is used for synchronization of time and frequency and as a parameter in the security system, Weiss explained.

Having discussed 3.0 fundamentals, Weiss turned to SFNs, which consist of multiple transmitters delivering the same signal on the same frequency to a given service area. “In order to do that,” Weiss said, “the frequencies have to be matched and the emission times have to be precisely adjusted.”

All transmitters must have the same reference bootstrap emission time, but they may be offset to shape network signal delivery, he added.

Weis also examined one way to localize datacasting in an SFN. It involves having a “normal” SFN deliver “mostly the same data on the same frequency into the overall service area but to allow certain PLPs to carry different data.” 

These specific PLPs are the same for every transmitter to ensure they transmit during the same transmission period to specific areas. Because different data is placed on different cells during given PLP periods and on the same PLP frequency, the cells will interfere with one another where coverage from SFN sites overlaps, Weiss said. 

“Doing this becomes an exercise in carefully adjusting the properties of the transmission. … [B]y making good choices of what the parameters are, that interference can be minimized, and these smaller service areas can be enlarged to the maximum extent possible [to enable localized data delivery],” he said.

EXTENDING SFN FUNCTIONALITY

Triveni’s Corl examined the use of 3.0 SFNs as a statewide network. For the presentation, Corl looked at a hypothetical network with a broadcast studio—in some cases multiple regionalized studios across the state—connected to a set of transmitters. Some may be connected via microwave, by fiber through a switch and even an SFN at the edge.

“In the ATSC 1 world, that [the described network] wasn’t a problem, but in the ATSC 3 world there’s a lot of signing and authentication going on,” said Corl. “[S]ending the same stream to all the transmitters is somewhat problematic because all that signaling and interactive content and all the things you might want at these different transmitters has to be signed.”

Having private keys “floating around” at the transmitter sites where there may be no one to attend to them isn’t a good idea. “So, you can’t actually regionalize things unless you have multiple STLs—separated all the information out into multiple STLTP streams,” he said.

This would be necessary because at the exciter level it’s not possible to “crack open” the STLTP and “tear things apart or add things,” Corl explained.

Another consideration is that in many statewide networks, especially those of public broadcasters, most of the data is redundant. There are some primary channels and occasionally some tertiary channels, but the broadcaster might want to do region-specific, ancillary text crawls, he said.  

Bandwidth restrictions in the network can be a problem. “Sending a couple—maybe three or four—STLTPs to transmitters over fiber is no big deal … [where] they typically have a gig of bandwidth,” he said. “But when … the connections are only, say, 10BASE-T … you really have to start paying attention to the network’s capabilities.”

Before laying out the statewide SFN network solution in detail, Corl reviewed basic ATSC 3.0 transport concepts, illustrated with a diagram that started on the right with Data Source Packets and ended on the left at the exciter. 

In between was a visual representation of the Common Tunneling Protocol (CTP) and Data Source Transport Protocol packets feeding the ALP Encapsulator. The CTP uses SMPTE ST 2022, which enables use of forward error correction and a fixed packet size. “They’re all RTP, UDP IP multicast packets, but they are completely opaque to what they are carrying,” said Corl.

One important quality of the DSTP—which carries receiver-destined packets—is that the packet address space is hidden. This is important because it allows duplicate Data Source Packets to be sent without conflicting with one another or needing a receiver to understand there are differences, he explained.

The ALP Encapsulator processes the DSTP packet tunnel and strips out everything and puts the internal packets carried through the tunnel into “out packets,” which are data packets with a particular header that use the ATSC Link Layer Protocol (ALP). This allows the packets to be hidden on the receiver side and in the Scheduler. At this point, ALP Encapsulator maps Data Source Packets to PLPs—one ALPTP to one PLP. The encapsulator then sends ALP packets to the Scheduler, he said.

It, in turn, processes the ALPTP packet tunnel, inserts PLP ALP packets into baseband packets, adds the preamble, timing and management packets and turns them into STLTP packets, which carry the preamble, baseband and time and management packets to the exciter. In each phase, packets are signed, he added.

Corl emphasized that ATSC 3.0 is IP-based, which means the stream doesn’t simply need to be data intended for receivers—audio, video and closed captioning data, but it is also possible to put other data into the stream that’s not intended for regular off-the-shelf receivers, he said.

Corl laid out different scenarios supporting the hypothetical statewide SFN, beginning with in-band distribution to individual SFN transmitter sites. “Essentially what you’re doing is carrying a backhaul for the SFN,” he said. “You’re carrying the STLTP in the actual broadcast.”

The STLTP carriage can be in a separate PLP. LDM may be used, announced as a private data stream in the low level signaling (LLS). A dedicated antenna tuned to receive this signal from the source transmitter is used. This setup also provides a redundancy mechanism if the network is lost. “The exciter doesn't actually have to be connected to a network or as well, it can be connected to the network and actually see this other STLTP carriage as a backup,” he explained.

The second scenario leverages regionalized PLPs. Here ALPTP is sent over the broadcast with common AV services, such as SD and HD, and some NRT (non-real time) data carrying configuration data. There is also a regional AV service in a secondary PLP. Receivers in the broadcast coverage area won’t know what to do with the secondary streams and ignore it.

At the SFN receive site, the configuration data will be used to program two functions that “essentially are equivalent to a Broadcast Gateway,” said Corl. This approach enables ALPTP streams and NRT to be privately signaled and carried in another PLP. Another ALPTP stream could be carried to supply a PLP to remove ALP encapsulation.

A third scenario allows for regionalized PLPs, but focuses on the content. “In each stage … we’re basically taking and carrying different aspects and different control information to the point where we can fine tune it down to the point where we have different signaling for each of the transmitters,” he said, adding that the signal doesn’t need to be signed at the regional SFN transmitter because it was signed at the studio and passed to the SFN transmitters.

“We can actually have very specific transmitters and essentially build an entirely new broadcast at each stage simply by taking very selective IP streams out of the network and carrying this information,” he added.

In all three scenarios, everything coming over the air can be signed and validated to make sure a nefarious actor is not replacing content or changing any of the signaling. Additionally, with physical security in place at SFN sites—locks on transmitter buildings—there is no need for a private key for the entire network at these remote sites. “You just need it to be able to decode whatever’s coming in,” he said.

Finally, Corl laid out a backup plan to reach all SFN sites, which is already in place with the 3.0 SFN deployment. 

“Backup information could be running all of the time, and you could be sending out the information all of the time, even though your networks were there,” he said. “So failure of the network or even partial failure of the network would easily be just switching over to the other mechanisms and carriage.”

(Editor’s note: Part two will examine the Broadcast Gateway and Core Network presentations.)

Out west in Phoenix, Pearl TV along with its other market partners in December 2020 launched a two-node ATSC 3.0 SFN trial on The E.W. Scripps Company-owned KASW.

Back east, Louis Libin, Sinclair Broadcast Group vice president for Spectrum Engineering and Policy, was preparing in late 2020 for a Q1 launch of a new six-node 3.0 SFN test on channel 30 in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., area that will also include a Sinclair big stick.

The Phoenix SFN test initially looked at the viability of different ATSC 3.0 use cases that rely on single frequency networks. Longer term, testing is designed to help guide broadcasters to optimize future SFN deployments.

Sinclair’s test will look at the basic functionality of an SFN in a limited area using 40W transmitters (200W to 400W ERP), a newly designed, radome-enclosed Dielectric antenna with slant polarization and other technology in a self-contained package that the broadcaster can quickly and easily deploy about four or five miles from each other to blanket markets in the future. Think cell phone network with better than 5G performance (broadcast bits rather than unicast), and you get the picture.

What violates Kipling’s “never the twain shall meet” dictum when it comes to these east and west SFN tests is a common desire on the part of those conducting them to share findings with other broadcasters, whether competitors or not, to make it easier for every broadcaster to succeed with 3.0.

Dave Folsom, retired CTO of Raycom Media and a Pearl TV engineer, says findings will be shared with the industry, including baseline performance compared to that of using different modcods and operational data. “That will be freely distributed and freely shared with everyone, and people can make their own conclusions based on the data,” he said.

Libin’s plans mirror those of Folsom. Saying Sinclair “desperately” wants to share its SFN findings domestically and around the world, Libin identifies a desire to help the industry grow as motivating this magnanimity.

That’s where the TV broadcast industry is as it enters 2021. Whether east or west, north or south, there’s a strong spirit of cooperation and collaboration on the technical side that ultimately will position the front office to make business decisions that lead to success and move their organizations forward.

PISCATAWAY, N.J.—IEEE Broadcast Technology Society has announced it will host an IEEE BTS Pulse event from February 9-11, which will discuss topics including single frequency networks, applications for drone technology and 5G content production.

The second ever IEEE BTS Pulse event, the three-day virtual event aims to answer vital broadcast industry questions with top experts, according to IEEE BTS’ website.

The first of the three days will be dedicated to SFN and virtualization cohesiveness. The session will look at the fundamentals of ATSC 3.0 SFNs as well as the virtualization of broadcast gateways and some of the challenges and uses of software-based SFN implementations. S. Merrill Weiss, Merrill Weiss Group LLC; Benoît Bui Do, Enensys; Mark Corl, Triveni Digital; and Ali Dernaika, Hewlett Packard Enterprise are slated to speak on day one.

Day two will focus on drones and thermography, specifically how thermal imaging can be used to scan broadcast transmission lines and antennas to identify possible areas of concern and how drones can help in this area. Paul Shulins, BTS vice president and president of Shulins Solutions, is tapped as the day two session chair. Session speakers will also include certified thermographers and an expert on using drones for broadcast signal measurements.

The third and final day of IEEE’s Pulse event tackles 5G content production. Organized by the European H2020 project 5G-RECORDS, the session will look at the opportunities and challenges of 5G for professional audiovisual content production. This will include presentations on the European Broadcasting Union’s 5G content production activities and 5G technology enablers from Ericsson and Nokia. David Gomez-Barquero, Universitat de Valencia, Communications Department, iTEAM Research Institute- Mobile Communications Group will lead the session.

For more information on the IEEE BTS Pulse event, visit IEEE BTS’ website. 

PHOENIX—NextGen TV service is getting a boost in Phoenix, as the Phoenix Model Market has announced the installation of a Single Frequency Network with the goal of improving reception for viewers and broaden the reach of broadcasters transmitting to NextGen TV sets.

An SFN uses multiple transmitters placed on the air within the coverage area on the same channel and carrying the same services. This increases the signal level available for over-the-air viewing and decreases the viewer’s need for a complex receiver antenna, while also enabling future use of mobility services to NextGen TV-equipped devices, says Pearl TV engineer David Folsom, who worked on the Phoenix SFN.

E.W. Scripps-owned KASW, a CW affiliate, installed the SFN and is acting as the host station. Hitachi-Comark provided the transmission equipment required at both its South Mountain and Shawn Butte SFN node locations. The tower and transmission facilities were provided by American Tower Corporation. In addition, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute and manufacturers Cleverlogic, Agos and KaiMedia have provided test equipment and technical support to calibrate the SFN.

KASW has sharing agreements to carry the simulcast of its sister station, KNXV (ABC), as well as KSAZ (Fox) and KUTP (Fox Xtra) as next-generation TV broadcasts. All of these services are carried within the same physical channel, but they will appear as their originally assigned channels on all NextGen TV receivers.

“The objective results of SFN performance will be shared with the broadcast industry, and this project will truly be an international effort,” said Folsom.

The Phoenix Model Market, which has been active for almost three years, is a test best for the development of next-generation TV service, including the ATSC 3.0 standard.

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.

ATSC 3.0 offers at least three ways to make reception easier that aren’t available or are difficult to implement in 1.0. One involves providing a stronger signal to the viewer. The others make the signal more robust so less signal strength is required.

DISTRIBUTED TRANSMISSION SYSTEM (DTS, AKA ‘SINGLE FREQUENCY NETWORK’) 

A DTS consists of multiple transmitters on the same frequency spread throughout the coverage area to provide a uniform strong signal for indoor reception throughout the coverage area. DTS was available for ATSC 1.0, but it was difficult to provide a uniform signal without creating areas of self-interference. ATSC 3’s COFDM modulation can eliminate that interference.

A major advantage of a DTS is that, by providing a stronger signal level, less of the broadcast channel’s capacity has to be devoted to error correction and higher order (less robust) modulation constellations can be used, which provide greater efficiency (bits per Hertz). A DTS is the ideal way to improve ATSC 3.0 reception as not only is the stronger signal easier to receive over a wider area, but the higher data rates allow for more program streams and higher resolution video.

The problem is that building out a DTS involves setting up multiple transmitter sites, getting a signal to those sites and in addition to capital cost, extra operating costs (leases, power, etc.) for multiple transmitter sites. For a DTS to provide reliable indoor coverage to an entire market, some FCC rules changes are also needed. These are outlined in the recent FCC NPRM FCC 20-43.

SACRIFICE BITS FOR ROBUSTNESS

Unlike ATSC 1.0, ATSC 3.0 allows a trade-off between robustness and data rate. It is possible to transmit a signal that can be received at or below the noise level (0 dB SNR) but this requires a robust modulation method (least efficient) and a large amount of error correction coding, leading to a very low data rate.

There is almost infinite flexibility in determining the trade-off, so a broadcaster could decide to sacrifice some bits using Time Division Multiplexing (TDM), for example, from the less robust but higher bit rate streams to create a more robust physical layer pipe (PLP) on the signal. Because data rate would be limited, the robust stream would likely be limited to standard definition (SD) or perhaps 720p HD, depending on how capacity was allocated between the main and robust PLPs.

SACRIFICE POWER FOR ROBUSTNESS

This may sound like a contradiction, but one way to come up with a more robust signal is to split the signal into two PLPs by dividing up power (instead of time or frequency) using Layered Division Multiplexing (LDM). A core layer PLP carries the robust signal and an enhanced layer PLP overlays a less robust signal at reduced power over the robust signal.

The reduction in power means the enhanced layer has less signal at the receiver, but because the less robust signal does not give up time or frequency to the robust layer, more capacity is available to offset the reduction in power. As with the TDM example, the trade-off between robustness and capacity remains. I describe some early tests of LDM in my 2015 article “LDM—Stacking Signals for Improved Performance.”

All three of these methods can be combined, providing even more flexibility.

MERIDEN, Conn.—Radio Frequency Systems (RFS) has announced it is ready to ship its new portfolio of ATSC 3.0 transmission solutions aimed at supporting U.S. broadcasters wishing to deploy single frequency networks to serve their markets with NextGen TV service.

The company designed the solutions specifically to SFN-related challenges. The portfolio includes broadband antennas with front-back radiation patterns and sophisticated antenna selection tools to assist broadcasters in selecting the right antenna pattern to cover their entire region without encroaching on neighboring markets, it said.

The antennas are light, easy-to-deploy and offer a low wind load. They are simple to install on existing towers to support SFN deployment, the company said.

RFS also is offering a line of combiners and filters to meet the needs of broadcasters looking to deploy 3.0 service. 

The solutions are designed with the flexibility to enable broadcasters to evolve service over the next decade to satisfy possible future requirements for 5G broadcast, the company said. 

“Despite the hype, 5G broadcast for the U.S. market is not feasible while 5G technology is in its infancy,” said Nick Wymant, RFS global product manager, broadcast. “The size of the population, geography and market set up in the U.S. make the next-generation TV standard an absolutely essential step in the evolution of over-the-air broadcast. We are delighted to offer a range of solutions that not only deliver on next-generation possibilities but are futureproofed for further evolution.”  

The portfolio includes: 

• NG Series: Broadband antennas for multichannel NextGen TV networks. The high-power rating and broadband performance allow multiple channels to be transmitted from an SFN site, reducing capital costs and providing consistent coverage across channels; 
• NG-RBL and NG-SBL Series antennas: Antennas with reduced back radiation for difficult site location network planning scenarios. These offer an easy way to meet FCC requirements without resorting to large reductions in radiated power; 
• CS Series: These Starpoint combiners offer an economical and compact solution for combining non-adjacent channels at multichannel SFN sites, while minimizing site infrastructure costs; 
• CA Series: Constant impedance balanced combiners offering a high-performance solution for combining both adjacent and nonadjacent channels at multichannel SFN sites; 
• HCA Series: Heliflex Air-Dielectric Coaxial Cable is fully broadband and well-suited for the requirements of multichannel SFN sites. Additionally, the Heliflex connectors offer quick installation, excellent gas tightness and extremely low losses; 
• Advanced RF simulation and modelling to ensure optimum network performance. 

More information is available on the RFS website. 

BALTIMORE—Broadcast industry consultant Kessler and Gehman Associates (KGA) is using Acrodyne Services’ Progira plan broadcast network planning software to help broadcasters develop their NextGen TV strategies, particularly to assist with single frequency network (SFN) planning,  Acrodyne announced.

“We purchased Progira plan for a variety of projects around spectrum planning and optimization, but there’s no question that the main scope is for ATSC 3.0,” said Ryan Wilhour, consulting engineer at KGA.

The planning tool is used around the world by consultants and broadcasters to design broadcast networks with optimum reception probability. Over the past few months, Acrodyne has experienced increased sales of the tool in the United States as broadcasters near the end of the TV spectrum repack and begin planning ATSC 3.0 deployments, the company said.

Many broadcasters are considering SFNs for 3.0 as a transmission model—a stark change from the high-power big stick approach employed for ATSC 1.0 transmission. Progira plan offers a sophisticated toolset for SFN planning and helps consultants plan networks with multiple transmitter sites designed to reinforce each other for consistent market-wide reception and interference avoidance, said Andy Whiteside, general manager of Acrodyne Services and president of Dielectric. The tool assists users in understanding reception conditions and network timing requirements for mobile users, he added.

“The main benefit [of Progira] is the amount of time we save in planning SFN sites,” said Wilhour. “The software interfaces with the FCC LMS database and exports studies to TV Study for final FCC presentation.

“It automatically defines the appropriate antenna patterns and network timings,” he said. “No longer must the broadcast consultancy pull in antenna patterns, apply them to contours one by one, and evaluate if they remain within allotted coverage areas.

“The software integrates seamlessly with ArcMap geographic information systems (GIS) as well, and allows me to very quickly generate contours and their population counts,” he added.

However, not all broadcasters are considering SFNs for 3.0 deployment; some will rely on their conventional tall tower. The Progira plan is appropriate for reception prediction of both approaches, said Whiteside.

To date, KGA has put the Progira plan to work on a variety of projects, including SFN planning in San Francisco to model potential reception plans for several UHF TV channels and to plan a studio-to-transmitter microwave path profile for an ATSC 1.0 broadcaster.

“There is no question that we are finding new business and making money by using this software,” said Wilhour. “We have one client that is looking at ATSC 3.0 SFN plans for all major markets, and they understand the requirement for accurate coverage models. We can start with the basic metric analysis and then provide very detailed theoretical data that will help them accelerate network buildouts, from identifying proper antenna patterns to gaining construction permits. This software opens up many new business opportunities,” said Wilhour.

More information is available on the Acrodyne Services website.

WASHINGTON—The FCC today adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that would modernize its Distributed Transmission System rules to enable TV broadcasters to enhance coverage from NextGen TV (ATSC 3.0) single frequency network on the edge of coverage areas.

“America’s Public Television Stations applaud the action taken today by the FCC, a welcome endorsement of changes in the current rules that will allow broadcast television stations to unlock the benefits of NextGen TV through DTS operations that better serve their viewers while preserving their commitment to localism and avoiding interference issues,” said Patrick Butler, president and CEO of APTS.

The NPRM seeks comment on technical changes proposed by APTS and NAB to the agency’s rules to allow—with certain limits—signals from SFN sites to “spill over” beyond the authorized service area of a station “by more than the ‘minimal amount’ currently allowed” by the rules, the FCC said.

In an October 2019 rulemaking petition filed by APTS and NAB, the organizations asked the FCC to permit stations to deploy SFNs in which the noise limited service contour (NLC) of a DTS transmitter “may exceed the reference facility’s (i.e. the station’s primary transmitter’s) NLC. However, in the case of UHF stations, the 36 dBu F(50, 10) interference contour of a DTS transmitter may not exceed reference facility’s 36 dBu F(50, 10) contour.

The petition noted that the value was proposed because it will ensure interference protection for co-channel Class A and LPTV station operators. Similar interference avoidance was proposed for low- and high-VHF channels.

“These small changes will improve coverage throughout local public television stations’ service areas and improve their ability to offer robust mobile service. It will also enhance spectrum efficiency by reducing the need for television translators operating on redundant channels,” said Butler.

NAB and APTS noted in its petition that the proposed changes are needed to allow broadcasters and viewers alike to benefit fully from the potential of ATSC 3.0. 

In its NPRM, the agency seeks comment on whether it should change its spillover limits. “In particular, we seek comment on Petitioners’ claim that such a rule change is needed now as the industry embarks on ATSC 3.0 deployment,” the NPRM said. The commission is also seeking comment on whether to adopt the 36 dBu F(50, 10) interference contour as the limiting contour for spillover.

The FCC also seeks comment on the Comparable Area Approach adopted as part of its 2008 DTS Order and whether to retain it as part of its 2017 NextGen TV Order. It also wants to know if the proposal would make it possible for broadcasters to serve additional areas without going through a competitive bidding process, and seeks comment on how such changes would affect the agency’s policy goal of promoting localism.

NAB welcomed news of the NPRM. “NAB applauds the Commission for proposing deployment of single frequency networks allowing broadcasters to better serve viewers while preserving our commitment to localism,” said NAB President and CEO Gordon Smith. “These SFNs could improve service throughout a station’s coverage area and, in particular, near the edge of the coverage area. SFNs could also improve mobile reception and allow more efficient use of broadcast spectrum. FCC staff is to be commended for moving this item quickly, and we look forward to establishment of final rules.”

The NPRM is available on the FCC website.

ARLINGTON, Va.—The standard has been approved, testing is ongoing and new TV sets with support for NextGen TV (aka ATSC 3.0) debuted at CES2020 earlier this month. Now comes the hard part—marketing it.

That was among the chief topics at SMPTE’s NextGen TV Summit hosted by WETA last week. A standing-room-only crowd discussed the technology, marketing and business opportunities broadcasters could harness with the new over-the-air broadcasting standard. And one of the first steps is branding.

“We don’t talk about ATSC 3.0 anymore,” said Lynn Claudy, senior vice president of technology for NAB and chairman of the ATSC board of directors; “now we talk about NextGen TV.”

KEEP UP WITH THE JONESES

In a quickly evolving mobile, digital world, broadcasters have to assert themselves once again if consumers are to embrace the new standard, Claudy added.

“There’s a lot of competition and disruption; you have to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ in digital media,” Claudy said. Referring to the IP component with NextGen TV that allows broadcasters to provide OTT-type services, Claudy said, “We have to be seamlessly integrated into existing online broadband ecosystem in a meaningful way.”

With increased demand on spectrum, “the pressure is on broadcasters to be more efficient,” Claudy added. “You’ve got to do more with less.”

Claudy’s opening comments were echoed by ATSC President Madeleine Noland.

“The cellular industry is ravenous for spectrum,” she said. “And the way to defend your spectrum is to use it well. And I think the ATSC 3.0 standard is going to help broadcasters make their stake in the ground very strongly with, ‘hey, our spectrum is being used extremely wisely for the betterment of the people and the economy.’”

One of the most significant differences between ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 is the latter standard’s emphasis on mobility, which was driven home by Mark Aitken, senior vice president of technology for Sinclair.

“[With ATSC 1.0], we lost consumers because we had an opportunity to be the mobile leader and we didn't choose that path,” Aitken said. “And if we forget that this time around, we might as well put the gun to our head right now.”

In 2017, Sinclair offered to give away 1 million NextGen TV tuners to any cellphone makers willing to add the capability to their devices. While there have not been reportedly any takers, Sinclair has showcased a NextGen TV chip it has developed in conjunction with Saankhya Labs, VeriSilicon and Samsung Foundry, and Aitken hinted that there will be new developments to see at the NAB Show in April.

“Don’t be surprised if you see a smartphone with a NextGen TV chipset at NAB,” Aitken predicted.

SINGLE FREQUENCY NETWORKS

Broadcasters are currently petitioning the FCC to revise the commission’s standards to allow the increased use of multiple transmitter deployments to make NextGen TV signals cut down on multipath, making the broadcast signal more robust in the mobile environment. These “single frequency networks” could be the key to consumer adoption, according to attendees.

“SFNs let you extend your coverage into shadow areas,” Noland said, adding that an SFN in San Francisco, for example, could increase audience reach up to 40%.

SFNs also represent an opportunity for broadcasters in one market to cooperate on deploying and enhancing NextGen TV coverage, according to Jeff Andrew of Osborn Engineering.

“We believe that SFNs should be co-located—all the stations in one particular market should all be on the same SFN sites, sharing the same infrastructure,” Andrew said. “Pick your channel assignments that support SFN deployment.”

NextGen TV also allows for enhanced graphics and geo-targeted emergency alerts through its AWARN platform. With broadcasters often serving as the primary source of information, this could enhance even more broadcasters’ roles during emergencies.

“Wireless companies are not overly eager about wireless alerts,” Noland said. “They don’t want to accept responsibility for the message that goes out. The broadcast community cares about such messages and enhances such messages. Broadcasters are content creators, not just content distributors, which differentiates us from the 5G community.”

John McCoskey, CEO of SpectraRep, mentioned that the industry needs to create a consistent look when it comes to providing enhanced emergency alerts.

“We are looking at approaches that will provide a similar look across all channels,” adding that “there is a fair amount of interest among broadcasters about how to tie emergency alerts into the news workflow.”

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

NextGen TV is not being deployed in a vacuum however. 5G was described as “the elephant in the room” at the conference, but NextGen TV advocates emphasized the differences between a broadcast one-to-many service and cellular one-to-one.

Acknowledging the hype around the next-generation cellular standard now being rolled out in selected areas, Josh Arensberg with Verizon Media reminded attendees that “5G is an enabler, a last mile provider, just like ATSC 3.0,” but that as content creators, broadcasters can better enable programming and information tailored to the benefits provided by broadcast.

“Without content and people creating experiences, there’s nothing,” he said. But because higher resolution content comes with a bigger data appetite, “you can see a $500 bill within minutes with up to 10 Gbps downloads [in 5G],” adding that when it comes to efficiency in a mobile device, when compared to “cost per bit,” 5G is up to “90% less efficient.”

“[NextGen TV] can contribute to a very efficient battery life,” Arensberg added.

CONTENT IS NO LONGER ‘KING’

When it comes to business opportunities for NextGen TV, Mark Fratrik, senior economist with BIA took issue with the traditional “content is king” mantra.

“Platforms and devices drive the business models more than the content,” he said. “It’s hard to think that content is king; Roku, for example doesn’t create content, but Wall Street loves them. For incremental growth, it’s platforms and devices that drive the growth today.”

Fratrik and his colleague Rick Ducey unveiled the results of their study that estimates that broadcasters could grow revenue 50% over the next 10 years as they deploy ATSC 3.0. Nevertheless, the ATSC 1.0 signal will continue to be the main source of revenue over the next decade, they said.

“Even with the new capabilities NextGen TV provides, traditional linear TV advertising and retransmission will continue to account for the lion’s share of revenues throughout the 2020s,” Fratrik said.

A CLEAR MESSAGE

With deployments under way and sets scheduled to hit retail by the 2020 holiday shopping season, marketing NextGen TV will probably be the biggest challenge for broadcasters in 2020. Skip Pizzi, vice president of technology education and outreach for NAB, advised caution when promoting a product and service that can’t be accessed by consumers yet.

“You don't want to push too hard on the consumer side if there isn't yet a product that they can use,” he said. “You have to be careful and clear on the messaging.”

For those consumers who have heard about NextGen TV, the main takeaway has been that it will allow for 4K resolution and enhanced audio. And for South Korea, which has gotten a headstart on deploying ATSC 3.0, 4K has been described as the “killer app.”

That country in fact, is already planning on shutting down ATSC 1.0 before the end of the decade according to Claudy. “They have already planned their shutoff of ATSC 1.0 in 2027,” he said. “All HD content will be gone in favor of 4K by then.” But he also reminded attendees that that country’s transition to ATSC 3.0 was mandated by the government. “Korean broadcasters also got more spectrum for the transition,” Claudy said.

In the early stages of the deployment in the U.S., Claudy believes broadcasters will opt for 1080p resolution with HDR and HFR (in certain situations) and just offer 4K on “special occasions.” But by combining over-the-air broadcasting with IP, the capabilities are so much more than that, according to Stacey Decker, CTO of Public Media Group, who reminded attendees that it’s not just NextGen TV, but other advances such as the cloud, AI and software-defined networking that is revolutionizing broadcasting.

“We're at a unique time in our history with regard to technology disruption,” he said. “We now have the opportunity to take the infrastructure we've all known for years and deploy these things on top of it and make it powerful.”

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s NextGen TV coverage, see our NextGen TV silo.

WASHINGTON—The Merrill Weiss Group in reply comments filed with the FCC this week sought to “set the record straight” regarding misunderstandings or mischaracterizations of proposed amendments to the FCC’s Distributed Transmission System rules (found in Section 73.626 of the Commission’s rules).

Penned by S. Merrill Weiss, the filing is presented to the agency as a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document that discusses the proposed changes, parts of the rule where no suggestion of amendment has been made and how the changes would affect other spectrum users.

Weiss, who pioneered DTS (also known as single frequency networks) use for ATSC 1 systems, including development of a method to synchronize transmitters in an SFN, cautioned the agency not to delay acting on the proposed changes to DTS rules. Doing so could result in “missed opportunities” causing harm to the TV broadcasting business, the filing said.

“Deciding to wait until more is learned about the operation of DTS networks in an ATSC 3.0 environment will preclude the deployment in a manner permitting full service to broadcasters’ service areas from the start, when they perhaps can have the greatest impact,” it said.

“The time for enabling improved service to the public through improvements of the DTS rule is now,” the filing said, adding that the petition should become a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking “without delay.”

A total of 21 questions are answered in the FAQs submitted as part of Weiss’ reply comments. Among the questions addressed are:

• Will the proposed rule modifications expand the defined service area beyond that defined under current rules in which a station can locate DTS transmitters? “No, they do not,” it said.
• Do the changes expand the defined service area beyond that defined in the current rules in which a station can expect interference protection? No, again is the answer, the filing said.
• Under the rule changes will stations be allowed to use a combination of antenna height and transmitted power greater than under the current rule? Once again, the answer is no.

The FAQs also spell out the main difference between the current DTS rule and the proposed rule. “The proposed rule changes the way in which the maximum field strength in certain directions from each transmitter in a DTS network is limited,” the filing said.

The questions and answers also address why the change in maximum field strength of DTS transmitters is needed, how the field strength is currently limited, how the field strength of DTS transmitters would be limited under the proposed rules and how the Interference Area Distance in the proposed Table of Distances would be determined.

The FAQs also explain how the changes would benefit full-service broadcasters as well as LPTV broadcasters, TV translators and Class A stations. Finally, the Q&As address whether the changes amount to “a ‘give away’ of large coverage areas to broadcasters” (no), and if the changes would make TV white spaces “all but unusable” (no, again).

The filing, which includes the FAQs, is available online.

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see ourATSC3 silo.

WASHINGTON—For the past several years, the ATSC’s annual meeting has provided a forum for broadcasters and broadcast-aligned entities alike to make offers they hope will advance deployment of Next Gen TV.

A few years ago, it was Mark Aitken of the Sinclair Broadcast Group and ONE Media, offering 1 million ATSC 3.0 receiver chips at no charge to cell phone manufacturers and other wireless device makers that promised to build them into their commercial products.

At this year’s gathering, which wrapped up Thursday, May 30, Public Media Group (PMG) announced its plan to transform the television industry with ATSC 3.0. Working with public and commercial TV broadcasters alike, PMG plans to roll out a nationwide network of 3.0 single frequency networks (SFNs) for reliable wireless delivery of data and mobile TV.

PMG, a partnership with the Public Media Venture Group’s public TV stations and Osborn Engineering, will design, engineer and build SFN sites for its client broadcasters, which in turn will lease that infrastructure from PMG on a long-term basis.

Besides building the SFN network, PMG will build datacenters and create software platforms in support of the deployment. There are even plans for renewable energy to power the SFN network. At its June launch, PMG will begin with its 31 public broadcasting entities, which represent nearly 120 stations that reach about 250 million Americans.

PMG’s management includes Erik Langner, former president of Public Media Company; Eric Dausman, former CTO of Osborn Infrastructure and COO of Sutro Tower, as SVP, RF Technology; and Joe Chinnici, former president and COO of BioStar Infrastructure, as CEO.

In this interview, Chinnici discusses PMG’s plans, its offering to broadcasters, its willingness to collaborate with a diverse set of clients and the opportunity SFNs transmitting data and television with 3.0 offers broadcasters.

(An edited transcript.)

TVTechnology:What is your offer and how will it impact the decisions of broadcasters as they weigh their alternatives for 3.0 rollout?

Joe Chinnici: There are four questions I get asked, really almost every single time, whether it’s a public sector client or a commercial client in regards to why us, why 3.0 as well as SFNs—let alone next-gen broadcast and datacenters.

Those four questions are: No. 1, do we have the engineering capabilities to develop a nationwide, market-neutral single frequency network platform?

The answer is yes. We’ve got sufficient RF engineering and technology capabilities to lead the industry, whether it is public or private [broadcasting]. One of our founding members is Osborn Engineering. They’ve been a market leader in RF engineering for several years.

No. 2, do we have the financial resources to pay for this? It is a pretty significant pro forma as you start to layer on multiple layers of infrastructure assets, and we have a very significant global equity infrastructure fund that is supporting us to the tune of several billion dollars.

We have two global financial institutions for project level as well as lease financing capability. So, we're well-capitalized to support our plan, so we can take that contingency off the table for our clients.

No. 3, arguably one of the more prominent questions is can we assist our clients with new revenue opportunities? Clearly that's top of mind for everybody as they consider entering into operating and lease expenses with us in return for us building out that infrastructure.

We're happy to say that we've made several introductions between non-traditional users of spectrum that would like to potentially sublease and utilize some of that data [capacity] with our broadcast clients. We don't get in the middle of that; it's not our job to do that. But it is our job to support our clients when they're considering evaluating and proceeding with new revenue opportunities.

And then fourth, are we neutral? I mentioned in the engineering comment we approach each market from an agnostic basis, and we design to the optimal deployment for all of our clients, whether they're public or private. We have no bias.

We don't have existing infrastructure assets that we try and position in that solution to the potential detriment of our clients. But more importantly, are we Switzerland between the clients?

TVT:It looks like you're proposing a competitive alternative to what Spectrum Co. has been working on. Is that correct?

JC: I think that's a fair statement. However, I'd reposition it this way. We're approaching the market on a fully collaborative basis with a neutral party to bring different clients within each segment together.

I applaud, certainly, other participants in the industry trying to advance 3.0 adoption, but they're doing it through a more limited or narrow approach.

Again, we approach it completely the opposite way. We engage all the market participants, whether it be a city DMA or a state-wide DMA and invite them into our process. That’s No. 1.

No. 2 is we have a full infrastructure development plan. Phase one is around ATSC 3.0 upgrades, as well as the single frequency network development. Phase two, next generation broadcast datacenter development. And then phase three, once we understand the critical load needs of phase one and phase two, we'll develop and deploy renewable energy. So we have a full lifecycle value proposal to our clients that has been well received.

Third, we're taking the financing off the table. Again subject to market lease, of course, and investment committee and underwriting, we remove that contingency. And then we also engage in new business opportunities.

TVT:Broadcasters are going to need to collaborate on channel sharing to get from ATSC 1.0 to 3.0. Are you going to be involved in that part of the process?

JC: Absolutely. We’ve started at ground zero, or even minus zero. So, by the end of this month we will have at least mapped out support for all of our initial 31 broadcast partner markets.

And those range from the largest—New York, Chicago, San Francisco—to the smallest—one is 80 miles outside Nashville—to statewide networks. It's not quite roughly a third, a third and a third, but you know, directionally, that's fair enough for this conversation. So we'll have that fully mapped out, and that represents 118 different stations.

That’s on the public side. We are doing that because that community represents a significant, albeit a minority, shareholder in our company. So we have an anchor client from a capital market’s perspective.

At the same time, we’ve engaged with seven different commercial clients, and they range from the networks to the group station owners in the markets where they overlap with the community I just mentioned, as well as some markets that are outside of that—although those are few and far between.

So, yes, we have been conducting and rolling out on a progressive basis. So by the end of June, we will have our initial core clients mapped out. We even have had channel swapping conversations going on.

TVT:What does having public broadcasters as minority shareholders bring to PMG?

JC: To be candid, I wish I could tell you that I came up with all of this, but I did not. We are extremely fortunate to have those 31 PBS stations as members in the minority ownership of our company.

There is a tremendous amount of goodwill there. When the hurricanes hit Houston within the past couple of years, virtually all of the commercial stations where knocked off the air. But the one that remained was the PBS station.

Overnight, they offered to and did host all of those other commercial stations, including one they hosted for about 18 months. This was done through generosity and goodwill in the industry.

So, there is this huge reservoir of political capital, if that’s what you want to call it, that we are able to leverage. So we’ve had a tremendous level of support as well from the commercial side.

TVT:So, the plan is to leverage the advantages SFNs bring, such as a higher, more consistent signal level throughout a market to deliver mobile or wireless data, and to roll this out nationwide, right?

JC: That is absolutely correct. Our ultimate plan is a nationwide rollout, and that will take us five, 10 or 15 years. What we have now is a starting point with that anchor set of clients on the public side—at least 118 different stations that reach 240 million to 250 million eyeballs already. So we already have a very large client segment to support. Creating a nationwide platform is going to take time, but ultimately that is our goal.

TVT:What is the deal you are offering broadcasters? You are going to pay for the capital expense of the SFN network deployments in exchange for what? Time on the network? A certain number of bits—a percentage of data throughput? Or something else?

JC: At the end of the day, it is a very pedestrian story. We receive a lease payment from our clients for access to this infrastructure we are building for phase one, phase two and phase three. It’s pretty simple.

With respect to getting involved with the spectrum or the data capacity and potential new revenue opportunities, we are certainly active and exploring new revenue opportunities for our clients.

But we do not participate in that. We do not manage their spectrum. We can certainly advise, introduce and even assist in executing a bilateral agreement between non-traditional users of that spectrum and the holders of that. But that’s not our business model.

However, related to that, we absolutely are involved in discussions around new revenue opportunities.

TVT:In announcing your plans this week, you identified the automotive and agricultural industries as possible clients for broadcasters with new PMG-built SFNs offering 3.0 service. Do you have real clients for broadcasters that you can bring to the table who want to use these SFNs to deliver data?

JC: The short answer is yes. We have a couple of other segments to fall in line with that. In no particular order, we have significant reverse inquiry around the educational aspects of this. It could be distance learning; it could be workforce retraining—in markets or even areas adjacent to metropolitan areas that can benefit from the connectivity and some entity providing that information flow.

We are seeing a significant amount of interest in the emergency management space from statewide networks to more localized. The wildfires in California, for example. The one thing everybody heard was that Verizon and AT&T powered down certain communications portals, and when you are in the emergency management business you can’t do that.

So we are in extremely active conversations involving new revenue opportunities in those spaces. And then technology clients, absolutely. And on the agricultural side the same.

TVT:Related to possible commercial broadcast clients, you mentioned PMG is engaged with seven networks and broadcast groups. Do those include member of the Pearl TV coalition?

JC: We are currently getting through our legal documentation, so we won’t be able to release the names until the end of June.

We would love to collaborate with Pearl. We don’t want to give the impression that we are competitive. We would be more than happy to collaborate with Anne Schelle and her team at Pearl as well as other industry participants.

TVT:Is there any reason why this has to be a competitive offering versus Spectrum Co.? In other words, why wouldn’t collaboration be possible?

JC: There is no reason. You are absolutely correct. Again we feel we bring a different approach—a broader approach and a more inclusive approach to this. The firm that you just mentioned, there are some competitive issues that are challenging. However we are able to bridge that divide.

We have been specifically asked by their executive management team to consider collaborating. I’ve said unequivocally, I am open to that. 

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see ourATSC3 silo.

LAS VEGAS—To provide the RF signals for the “Riding the Road to ACTS 3.0” model train displays, the NAB arranged for a four-transmitter single frequency network (SFN) to be designed and installed at the LVCC to demonstrate both the relative ease with which an SFN could be rolled out using ATSC 3.0 technology and the rock-steady video that the standard delivers to receiving devices that are on the move.

Kelly Williams, the NAB’s senior director of engineering and technology policy, described the project as very rewarding, and stated that even with the miniscule power being delivered by the network’s “transmitters” (they’re actually ATSC 3.0 modulators, or exciters with no power amplifiers added), he was very pleased with the results at all of the receive sites in the cavernous exhibit halls.

“[We found that] the signal had good coverage,” said Williams. “The modulation was set for 16-QAM, as we wanted it to be pretty rugged and robust, and the payload was set at about 10.5 mbps pushing video at about eight, and we’re using Surface Pro tablets with 3.0 dongles as receivers. The results were pretty darn good.”

One of these model railroad demos was set up in the Central Hall Concourse, and two others in the North Hall.

Williams explained that the idea for the SFN to complement the ATSC’s “Road to ATSC 3.0” and “Riding the Road to ATSC 3.0” themes came about in a brainstorming session, and that the time from concept to installation at the LVCC was less than four months.

“Lynn Claudy (the NAB’s senior vice president of technology) conceived [the SFN idea] around the first of the year,” said Williams. “We always want to do something new here at the show, and we knew we wanted to do some sort of ‘on-the-air’ demo, as we’re broadcasters and we’ve done something that involved being on-the-air for the last three years. In noodling it around, Lynn said ‘why don’t we build an SFN?’”

Williams said that John Turner of Turner Engineering was tasked with designing and building the SFN, and once he was on board, things moved out very quickly. Another principal contributor to the demos was Comark, which provided the entire rack of integrated ATSC 3.0 headend equipment and two of the four exciters.

“I think we shipped everything to John by mid-February and here we are today,” said Williams. “John is a master of figuring out how to do things that have never been done before.”

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see ourATSC3 silo.

PHOENIX—The collaborative effort among broadcasters to test Next Gen TV transmission in Phoenix will soon be expanding its purview, announcing the creation of a second station with a signal that will utilize a Single Frequency Network. NAB will assist with the planning and design of the new station, which will specifically explore the benefits of SFN.

SFN transmissions are meant to allow broadcasters to improve signal power and reach while offering signals that can be viewed in a moving vehicle or made more robust for reception inside buildings. Multiple transmitters throughout the market are used for an SFN to improve signal levels, it is also expected to fill in areas in the Phoenix market that have been hard to reach with over-the-air signals. SFN is enabled with the ATSC 3.0 broadcasting standard being tested in Phoenix.

As part of that test, the Phoenix Model Market has had a Next Gen TV station operating for the past year, owned by Univision and carrying six separate Next Gen TV broadcast streams over-the-air to Pearl TV member stations, NBC Universal, Fox TV stations and Univision to test many ATSC 3.0 features and capabilities.

With the addition of the SFN-enabled station, the Phoenix Model Market will have multiple testing facilities, opening the door for additional testing.

The SFN tower site is being provided by American Tower, with ATSC 3.0 broadcasts enacted by Comark and GatesAir SFN transmitters, according to Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV. Pearl and other Phoenix Model Market broadcasters will build out the new SFN system.

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see ourATSC3 silo.

ARLINGTON, VA.--Broadcast engineers from around the globe converged here for three days last week to exchange information about the industry and broadcast technology developments at the annual IEEE Broadcast Technology Society Fall Symposium.

In spite of the demands of the ongoing television spectrum repack, some 160 engineering consultants, equipment manufacturers, and broadcast group personnel took time away from their duties to join academics and others from as far away as Russia, Brazil and South Korea at the Oct. 9-11 tech con.

Next-Gen TV was the hot topic this year, with nearly half of the presentations falling into this category and nine directly focused on ATSC 3.0’s potential, field testing, deployment, business models, and evaluation metrics. Presentations even included some “one step beyond” views into the future television experiences. One described methodology for transmitting information to provide sensory stimulation beyond sight and sound, and a lunchtime keynote presenter described taking virtual reality out to the ball game.

BRINGING BACK THE ACTION WITH VR

In her presentation, Uma Jayaram, engineering director for Intel Sports True VR division, described why her company decided to launch a virtual reality TV sports production element, and discussed some of the technical issues that had to be resolved to make it possible.

“The timeline for [introduction and acceptance] of new use cases is dramatically shortening,” Jayaram said. “The telephone took 75 years to reach the 50 million user mark; ‘Angry Birds’ took just over a month to reach this mark.

“Companies such as Intel realize that you cannot afford to join the party after it’s well underway and things are moving really fast," she continued. "So, you place some bets, you get into the ecosystem, you play with it, you try to move it, and essentially see what’s going on in a more involved manner.

“When you think of Intel, you ordinarily think of the more traditional segments—CPUs, graphics and so on, but some of the big bets we are making have to do with artificial intelligence, VR, hygiene, and automated driving” observing that all of these emerging technologies involved moving and processing massive amounts of data, an Intel specialty.

“These areas are moving so fast that you want to be in that ecosystem,” said Jayram in explaining Intel’s decision to launch the sports business unit two years ago.

“On ‘game day’ we show up with our cameras, we set up alongside the networks and stream VR experiences in near real time,” she said. “We provide [feeds] to about 10 right’s-holding broadcasters.”

In her presentation, Jayaram did flag some VR limitations, noting that perhaps the biggest centers on the cumbersome headgear that consumers must don.

“I can’t watch with a headset for more than a few hours,” she said.

As one solution, her unit is creating shorter duration or “snackable content” sports highlights packages. “We’re also working to provide a better user interface…something that would allow a person to do VR viewing while still interacting with friends,” she said.

She also described some technical considerations in VR that don’t really exist in ordinary television coverage.

“Time synchronization is very important when you have six separate cameras that all have to be synched together along with the audio," she said. "Seamless ‘stitching’ of the multiple views is also very important.”

Branding of the viewing apps for consumers is also something of a challenge as Intel's Sports unit is dealing with multiple broadcast entities operating in several countries. “In the U.S., NBC has the rights, so we have to have an NBC app with the 'NBC look and feel' and colors. We now have to put out about 33 of these apps [to accommodate the various broadcast entities and viewing devices].”

Jayaram also noted that a business model has to be established before widespread deployment of VR sports coverage can take place.

“We’re looking at subscription models,” she said. “In the end you have to make money. This is still being worked out.”

WHAT’S HAPPENING OUT IN THE [3.0] FIELD?

Status reports on ATSC 3.0 rollouts in three U.S. markets were part of the conference program, with WRAL-TV’s Transmitter Supervisor Matt Brandes describing activities at his company’s Raleigh-Durham, N.C. test facility. Fred Baumgartner, director of Next Gen TV implementation for Sinclair Broadcast Group, provided an update on the station group's Dallas-Ft. Worth ATSC 3.0 single-frequency network initiative, and Pearl TV’s Dave Folsom described goings-on in connection with the "Phoenix Model Market project.

All offered some lessons learned and dos and don’ts takeaways.

“If you’re a person blessed with the privilege of setting up a brand new ATSC 3.0, please download and read the ATSC recommended practices on the Physical Layer, go play with your toys, and then come back and read the recommended practices again,” said Brandes. “Also, buying a new encoder might do more for your coverage than putting in two transmitters. If you can get three dB improvement [in encoding], this is equivalent to doubling your power.

Speaking for Pearl TV, Folsom noted that early equipment implementations are still not complete and software versioning is a big issue

“Anytime someone makes a software upgrade, everything downstream quits working, including the receivers," he said. 

Folsom added that the ability to interchange encoding, packaging and encapsulation units isn’t fully developed yet. “You should be able to connect up the unit and it should work, but it doesn’t," he said. "The standards are clear, [but] there’s a lot of misunderstanding among manufacturers about what needs to be there.”

Baumgartner observed that monitoring and control in connection with SFN transmitter sites is a potentially big issue. “We’re just starting to put our toes in that water and we can run [the Dallas-Ft. Worth installations] from our handheld devices, but at some point, it’s going to start to look like MediaFLO and then you’re got 300 transmitters out there and you have to start thinking about trucks, spare parts, and support infrastructure," he said. "You have to figure out how to make it all run economically.”

‘HACKING’ NEXT-GENERATION TELEVISION

Although the ATSC 3.0 racehorse is barely out of the stable, due to its hybrid broadcast/internet delivery, concerns are already surfacing about vulnerability of signals to manipulation by pranksters or others with darker agendas. Broadcast cybersecurity expert Wayne Pecena examined this in his presentation, “Hacking ATSC 3.0.”

He noted that the broadcast community was not exactly a stranger to nefarious intercepts of program streams, citing the 1986 takeover of HBO’s satellite transponder by “Captain Midnight,” and the “Max Headroom” incident the following year in which the studio-to-transmitter feeds of Chicago stations WGN-TV and WTTW were breached and third-party content aired.

Pecena observed that those incidents had required a lot of technical savvy and large equipment costing many thousands of dollars. “Now someone with a tablet computer sitting in a coffee shop can wreak a lot more havoc,” he said.

He cited the potential risks to broadcasters of ATSC 3.0 stream hijacking, including dead air, loss of revenue, public embarrassment, data breaches, potential legal liability, loss of public trust, and impact on station resources.

Pecena urged station operators to gain a thorough understanding of their IP systems and think about ways in which they might be compromised, observing that “the Internet of Things really provides only minimal, if any, safeguards against hacks, with security often being an afterthought or a ‘neverthought.’”

He said that even with the security components inherent in ATSC 3.0 and a tightening of security at broadcast facilities, there still could be breaches occurring within the home environment.

“The consumer industry must adopt stronger IoT security features,” he said. “The weakest link determines the overall security of any system.”

During the gathering the society also recognized Merrill Weiss with its highest honor, the Jules Cohen award for excellence in broadcast engineering. 

The BTS Symposium moves to Hartford, Conn. in 2019. Conference dates are Oct. 1-3.

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

We’ve been hearing a lot about single-frequency networking lately, especially in connection with the rollout of ATSC 3.0. However, the technology has been around for a long, long time, with the first implementation taking place in the mid-1920s, and involving operation of radio stations fairly close to each other and sharing a common frequency.

This “synchronized broadcasting” technology involved the locking of transmitter carrier frequencies together (via a wired connection) to avoid unpleasant beat notes generated by the transmitter oscillators as they drifted slightly in frequency. (It helped if the two stations were broadcasting a common show [network-supplied, for instance] and weren’t geographically too far apart so that the slight delay due to audio delivery via telephone line wasn’t sufficient to cause an audible echo or “flanging” effect on consumer radio sets located midway between the common-frequency signals.)

During the 1950s and beyond, this sort of “on-channel” operation extended to television with the implementation of unlicensed “boosters” that retransmitted an off-air television station to small communities, or perhaps an individual, located in a valley area below the reach of the main TV signal. (These devices were typically located on mountain ridges with a receiving antenna directed at the desired station, followed by an RF amplifier feeding a transmitting antenna directed down into the valley without TV service.) These “boosters” could — and sometimes did — cause interference to television reception and other communications, and as such were a source of aggravation to the FCC. However, they did prove that on-channel operation of two or more transmitters was possible, if there was sufficient shielding from natural terrain to prevent multiple signals from reaching receivers.

[Read: Dallas ATSC 3.0 SFN Buildout Nears Completion]

Somewhat later, in the evolution of broadcast television, legal operation of such signal boosters or “gap-fillers” was permitted — but with care given to prevent interference to consumers in a station’s main service area through the use of terrain shielding and/or highly directional antennas.

Fast forward to the advent of digital television, and SFN technology took a giant leap forward due to the nature of the transmitted signal and the ability of receivers to reject unwanted signals (analogous to “ghosts” in analog television produced by reflections that create multiple signal paths). No longer did SFN implementers have to rely strictly on blocking of unwanted signals by terrain. According to ONE Media’s Fred Baumgartner, the very flat terrain in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area was one of the factors in locating the initial ATSC 3.0 SFN trial in that market, as it provides a “worst case” scenario in terms of terrain shielding.

Television industry consultant S. Merrill Weiss recognized early on, and engineered the world’s first ATSC 1.0 SFN in the State College, Penn., area to provide better coverage for the city’s WPSX-TV (now WPSU-TV). The use of DTV SFN technology has since spread to a number of other areas.

“There were 29 [SFN] applications filed before the repack,” said Weiss. “Of those 19 were approved before the freeze, and I believe all were built.”

Even though the technology has proven successful with ATSC 1.0, ATSC 3.0 should make television SFNs easier to implement.

“ATSC 1.0 is dependent on the design of the adaptive equalizer which can be quite different in its performance from receiver to receiver,” said Weiss. “ATSC 3.0 is dependent on the modulation that’s used, and all receivers will respond to it identically. And on top of that having multiple carriers (inherent in the 3.0 OFDM [orthogonal frequency division multiplex) signal] makes things a lot easier.”

Yiyan Wu, a scientist at Canada’s Communications Research Centre who has been heavily involved in the development of ATSC 3.0, added another factor in the signal’s potential versatility “ATSC 3.0’s OFDM modulation has a longer guard interval [than 1.0’s] and this provides more protection,” said Wu. “ATSC 1.0 uses variable equalization, and the longest echo that it can handle is about 64 microseconds. ATSC 3.0 can handle 150 microseconds. Longer echo means that your power can push out further. The longer the guard interval, the less transmission power you need.”

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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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WASHINGTON—Real-world deployment and testing of the ATSC 3.0 Next Gen TV standard was front and center at the Advanced Television Systems Committee Annual Meeting here yesterday (May 23) with reports from Pearl TV, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Capitol Broadcasting, NAB and public broadcasting.

The first session of the day, “Reports from the Road” moderated by Tom Butts, content director of TV Technology, demonstrated for the sold-out event just how far Next-Gen TV has come over the past few years.

“The last two years, we’ve had the [3.0] transmission going…,” said Peter Sockett, director of engineering and operations at Capitol Broadcasting Company, owner of WRAL-TV in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., during the session. “I looked at this entire [3.0] ecosystem, and it worked,” he said, recalling a special Next-Gen TV demonstration CBC made in February of 4K UHD HDR from NBCOlympics’ coverage of the Winter Games transmitted over the air via 3.0.

[Read: WRAL-TV Showcases Next Gen TV’s Potential]

“It all just played. It worked as you’d expect…. We are actually beyond the whole cliché of 'crawl before you walk; walk before you run.' We are beyond crawl.”

The session began with a presentation by Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV, about the ongoing 3.0 model market project the station consortium is leading in Phoenix. Twelve broadcasters are participating in the project, which among other things seeks to give broadcasters “a place to develop a common framework that will be needed for an end-to-end system in a basic [Next-Gen] TV service to be finally commercialized,” said Schelle during her presentation.

“You’ve got this 10,000-plus-odd page standard,” she said. “There are a lot of great capabilities that broadcasters can bring to the marketplace, but where do you start, and how do you think about the consumer in all of this?”

One place is with the cooperation of competitive stations in the market in the form of channel sharing as a means to protect legacy DTV viewers while freeing up spectrum for Next-Gen TV service.

In Phoenix, that has meant KNXV-TV, KPNX and KTVW, owned by Scripps, TEGNA and Univision, respectively, making room for KFPH-CD’s Escape, Get, and Unimas 1.0 services to free up KFPH-CD to serve as the first 3.0 stick in the market.

KFPH-CD, which lit up with 3.0 service April 6, is serving as an open, collaborative testbed for the consumer electronics community, the vendors building out the Next-Gen transmission system, broadcasters and consumers, she said.

[Read: Phoenix Model Market Launches Next Gen TV Broadcasts]

Phoenix broadcasters will cycle through KFPH-CD to gain their own experience with 3.0. The plan is to put a second 3.0 stick on air in November, she said.

Last week, FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly visited Phoenix to see the model market at work for himself. Next-Gen TVs from LG, Samsung and Sony were used to receive a 3.0 1080p HDR signal for the demo, she said, adding that Dolby AC-4 audio and advanced emergency alerting were demonstrated. 

Consumer labs are being set up in the market to get feedback from viewers on Next Gen TV service, many of which will go online later this year; however, as viewers have learned of the 3.0 rollout through mandated public notifications, many have already expressed interest in receiving Next-Gen TV, Schelle said.

Mark Aitken, vice president of Advanced Technology at Sinclair Broadcast Group, updated the meeting on the company’s deployment of a 3.0 single frequency network in Dallas.

“It’s a lot more than an SFN project,” he said. “Baltimore, in fact, was the first SFN project.”

Some of the knowledge gained from that project was on display in the lobby of the Ronald Reagan Building where the ATSC Annual meeting is being held, including a demo of SHVC being delivered over the air, he pointed out.

However, the Dallas SFN deployment of 3.0 is the beginning of Sinclair’s nationwide rollout of Next Gen TV, he said. But before the Sinclair deployment began –or any other SFN rollout for that matter starts—it is imperative for broadcasters to answer a single question. “Why are you doing this?” said Aitken. “If you answer the why you can start to figure out what it is you need [in terms of technology] to answer the why.”

[Read: Q&A: Mark Aitken On Dallas Next-Gen SFN Trial]

In Sinclair’s case, the answer centers on the station group’s desire “to address all device types of the future –not just the ones we have in hand today,” said Aitken. Those include automotive and deep indoor, thus all of the devices need to have sufficient RF saturation. “If you haven’t got signal level, you haven’t got anything,” he said.

Sinclair is using the Dallas deployment to develop a rollout strategy that leverages tower resources as they are, not as they ideally could be, he said. That means Sinclair is using an existing 1,000-foot TV tower, a 400-foot TV tower and a former AT&T microwave replay tower for its SFN sites.

“The fact is in many cases you are building to what exists,” said Aitken. “So the question is how do you get around the encumbrances.”

As Sinclair deploys its SFNs around the country, Spectrum Co is going to roll out with a minimum of two ATSC 3.0 Next-Gen TV stations in each market. “The reason is, frankly, we need capacity to invite people in to do the experimenting. Not just to do television but to do all the other things that are possible with the standard,” said Aitken.

Quoting Nexstar President and CEO Perry Sook, Aitken said: “It’s really about monetizing underutilized spectrum.”

NAB Senior Vice President of Technology Lynn Claudy reported on 3.0 tests conducted in February and March in Cleveland at WJW. NAB and CTA have partnered with the Tribune station to create an independent facility for broadcasters and vendors to test ideas and prototypes of 3.0 technology.

The 3.0 field testing conducted from Channel 31’s 1,000-foot tower delivering slightly over 400kW ERP might best be summed up with a spin on the business aphorism: "You can have it good, fast and cheap. Pick two," said Claudy.

In the case of Next-Gen TV from a single high-power stick, broadcasters can have two of these three: a high data rate, very robust reception and robust reception throughout the entire market, said Claudy. “If you want to get all three, you need to begin thinking differently –maybe an SFN to do that,” he said.

For the Cleveland test, Claudy’s team took 800 field strength measurements at 100 sites in the market. Four different PLPs that were time division multiplexed were used to look at different data rates with different levels of robustness, he said.

[Read: NAB-CTA Team On ATSC 3.0 Test Lab]

An antenna affixed to a 30-foot telescopic mast mounted on a van was used together with receiver and monitoring technology from South Korea's ETRI to take readings when fully extended and at the roof level of the van at 12 feet.

On the high data throughput end of the continuum was a 256 QAM modulated signal supporting 28Mb/s. On the highly robust end was 16 QAM delivering 4Mb/s. Two modes in the middle were used –one to emulate an ATSC 1 data rate and the other for a handheld mode, said Claudy. As would be expected, the less robust modes were less successful in terms of service availability, he said.

Claudy also addressed what it takes to get 3.0 on the air today. Broadcasters still can’t simply go through a catalog, buy what’s needed and get it running. That will be “bumpy,” he said.

While that observation on the surface may appear to be at odds with Sockett’s characterization of the 3.0 ecosystem, even CBC’s OTA demo of the Winter Olympics required a degree of handholding from the vendor community –specifically when it came to deployment of Dolby AC-4 audio.

Since the PyeongChang 4K UHD coverage, CBC has been running 4K UHD content from NASA TV, said Sockett during his presentation.

Besides its PLP 1 LDM enhanced layer used to transmit a 20Mb/s payload with 22dB SNR, CBC is using PLP 0 for a highly robust core layer delivery with 4.5Mb/s throughput at just under 3dB SNR, he said.

Used for mobile delivery, PLP 0 transmits content to Sockett “on the way home driving at posted speed limits plus maybe nine,” he said to chuckles from the audience.

Sockett also mentioned a recent success for ATSC 3.0 in North Carolina where first responders are beginning to provide emergency information that can be parsed into 3.0.

The session wrapped up with Prabu David, Dean of the College of Communications Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University, where WKAR is expected to deploy 3.0 this fall; and Marc Hand of the Public Media Venture Group, a consortium of 25 public media entities, that has been created to address 3.0.

“This is a group of stations that is very bullish on ATSC 3.0,” said Hand. The Public Media Venture Group is looking at the Next Gen TV standard in the context of education, emergency alerting and exploration of a range of partnerships, including how to work with commercial stations.

At Michigan State and WKAR, the focus will be on exploring “opportunities for creating interactive content to really tell a compelling story,” said David. MSU researchers from the fields of engineering, social science, medicine and automotive will contribute to the effort, he added.

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.

BALTIMORE & PORTLAND, ORE.—Second rounds of ATSC 3.0 single frequency network testing are ready to begin on both the East and West Coasts of the United States, but an objection filed with the FCC by a wireless carrier may mean bumps in the road for Sinclair Broadcast Group as it awaits commission approval to expand its Baltimore-Washington, D.C., corridor trial.

Digital modulation and RF specialist TeamCast, OneMedia 3.0 LLC, and Sinclair announced on Sept. 6 phase two of 3.0 SFN tests in Baltimore-Washington. The second phase includes the addition of a Comark Parallax transmitter in Washington to the existing SFN setup, which uses a GatesAir transmitter in D.C. and an Acrodyne IOT transmitter in Baltimore. There’s a catch, however.

The second phase of OneMedia’s ATSC 3.0 SFN test includes the addition of a Hitachi-Comark Parallax transmitter in Washington, D.C., to its existing SFN setup.

“The second channel of our SFN has been delayed due to an objection filed by one of the wireless carriers,” said Mark Aitken, vice president of advanced technology at Sinclair. “The transmitter is installed in Washington and ready to go. But until we get past this impasse, there won’t be a second channel.”

Phase two of the test was to involve the existing transmitters, which operate on Ch. 41, and the new 3.0 transmitter operating on Ch. 43. The setup currently is being fed by a TeamCast ST2L 3.0 exciter from a NOC in Baltimore although the new D.C. transmitter remains off air for the time being.

“We put a lot of time and money into it [ramping up phase two of the SFN text],” said Aitken, who declined to identify the wireless carrier and the reason for the objection.

‘REAL-WORLD EXPERIENCE’

In September 2015, the FCC granted the broadcast group Special Temporary Authority to initiate the first phase of its 3.0 SFN tests.

Phase two testing is important to Sinclair because it will allow the group to gain real-world experience with 3.0 channel bonding—something that is a key part of its plan for national deployment of the next-generation television standard.

Mark Aitken, vice president of advanced technology at Sinclair Broadcast Group

“Our [3.0] launch model assumes a minimum of two 6MHz channels being virtually bonded to provide a seamless consumer experience,” said Aitken.

Separately from the Washington-Baltimore SFN test, Sinclair is working with “a large well-known partner” to “build out and deploy SFNs,” he said. “We will soon be announcing a project in a top 10 market where a complete [3.0] multichannel, multisite SFN will be built and deployed for the purposes of putting together consumer market trials.”

The Sinclair SFN deployment has been shortlisted for an IBC 2017 Innovation Award in the Content Distribution Category.

‘LIGHTHOUSE’ TEST

In Portland, Ore., WatchTV has been conducting what company president Greg Herman described as “a large scale 3.0 test” involving five of its stations to—among other things—test the viability of the “lighthouse concept” that would leave one ATSC 1.0 channel on air to serve existing viewers with legacy DTV while at the same time rolling out next-gen TV service.

“We filed at the end of 2016 for an experimental license and received it with some negotiations with the FCC,” explained Herman. “We have the resources to apply multiple channels to it [the WatchTV SFN test], and not just one channel.”

For its test, WatchTV is maintaining one ATSC 1.0 channel and has put four 3.0 channels on air, as well as two gap fillers for two of the next-gen TV channels, he says.

WatchTV is using the TeamCast Vortex II ATSC 3.0 exciter for its Lighthouse tests.

WatchTV, which is using the TeamCast Vortex II ATSC 3.0 exciter, has tested all ATSC 3.0 modulation schemes, including QPSK and QAM constellations, and tested indoor as well as mobile reception, he says. For the mobile test, WatchTV assembled a special transportable 3.0 receiver in a Pelican case, said Herman. “We found out that 3.0 is astoundingly good,” he said.

Indoor off-air reception was equally impressive, he added. “With an indoor antenna, several of the low-power stations [in Portland] operating at 15 kW are non-receivable in 1.0,” he said. “However, with 3.0 at 9kW, signals are eminently receivable.”

WatchTV recently submitted its test data to the commission and filed to renew its experimental license, Herman told TVT. For the second phase of its 3.0 SFN testing, WatchTV may add as many as five more gap fillers, he said.

But even if that were to never happen, Herman said he is sold on ATSC 3.0. “This is a really, really good system. It is impressive, and the people like Dr. [Rich] Chernock [chief science officer of Triveni Digital and chairman of ATSC Technology Group 3] and the rest did a hell of a job.

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

 Personnel from Teamcast, Acrodyne and LG during the field-testing. 

BALTIMORE—The ONE Media team reports field-testing ATSC 3.0 “concepts” over single frequency networks on the East Coast. The testing is taking place under a Special Temporary Authority license covering Baltimore and Washington, D.C., granted by the Federal Communications Commission.

ONE Media said it and TeamCast “jointly developed, built and deployed the experimental SFN to demonstrate a higher quality of service to a broadcaster’s community of license.”

The benefit of a single frequency network, or SFN, comes into play when there are gaps in a coverage area due to terrain or building profiles. An SFN is a type of distributed transmission system that uses more, but smaller, transmitters than a traditional big-stick TV broadcast operation.

“An SFN transmitter can utilize the same frequency as the big stick and improve coverage. Unlike a translator/LPTV-repeater, the SFN is designed to work on the same channel with a slight—unnoticeable—offset that lets you ‘tune’ to the same channel as the main, original [channel],” an industry source said.

The Baltimore site. The first deployment of an SFN operation for television transmission was in 2003, at Penn State’s public station, WPSU-TV, broadcasting on Ch. 3 in State College, Penn. The State College SFN was designed and installed by S. Merrill Weiss, who holds a key SFN patent and was also consulted on an SFN project with the Manhattan Television Alliance in 2007. (See “ION Pursues NYC Signal Alternative.”) WMBC-TV in West Caldwell, N.J., deployed an SFN in 2011 using Thomson transmitters.

According to ONE Media, its SFN “validates, in a real-world environment, the operation and performance of new and innovative concepts relative to an ATSC 3.0 SFN deployment, such as deploying a full range of next-generation services including fixed, portable and mobile capabilities.”

ONE Media, a joint venture of Sinclair Broadcast Group and Coherent Logix, said the field trial SFN represented “the first of hundreds of SFNs Sinclair Broadcast Group and other broadcasters will roll out in adoption of the next-gen technology.”

The field-tested SFN consisted of two transmitters—one in Washington, D.C. and one in Baltimore—both transmitting on Ch. 43. Each used the latest TeamCast ATSC 3.0 exciter, integrated for U.S. applications by Comark. Sinclair provided the transmitter in Baltimore, an Acrodyne 60 kW IOT. The D.C. transmitter, a GatesAir solid-state Maxiva ULXT-12, was provided by the vendor. Dielectric provided filters, feed lines and antennas. American Tower Corp. provided the Washington, D.C. transmitter site. Signal Above LLC provided access to Channel 43 in D.C.; and LG Electronics provided the ATSC 3.0 receivers.

Dielectric and GatesAir gear in the D.C. facility.
ONE Media said these specific coverage field tests would be used to “support the finalization of the ATSC 3.0 Studio Transmitter Link document, defining the stream interface regimens to feed ATSC 3.0 SFN transmitters.”

The testing was done under ONE Media’s direction and Acrodyne Services project management. It was “designed to illustrate future opportunities such as addressing services and content to zones, i.e., geographically smaller areas of service; for verifying SFN timing and distribution methodology for standardization; impacting of SFN deployment on over-the-air services to mobile, portable and indoor reception environments; and confirming various modeling techniques,” ONE Media said.