Coming to Your TV: ATSC 3.0

The IEEE Broadcast Technical Society hosted presentations on Next Generation Television: ATSC 3.0 Tuesday, September 30. Presenters included Rich Chernock, of Triveni Digital and Luke Fay of Sony SCS.

SBE was well represented at the meeting at Sony US headquarters in Rancho Bernardo.

For a copy of the presentation and more information about the BTS, go here.

Program

Currently under development, ATSC 3.0 is a suite of new standards and practices for the next generation of broadcast television – a system that will provide a wide range of services to viewers.

This presentation summarized foreseen use cases and provided a summary to date of the progress standardization to date. Luke Fay compared mobile device support performance of ATSC 3.0 and LTE.

ATSC 3.0 is planned to have a clean break from the technologies of earlier-generation DTV systems. The initial work of TG3 focused on the development of a number of “use cases” that define the many potential functions that a new DTV system could provide to consumers, which then resulted in a number of requirements.   These requirements are now being used as the technology basis and ‘tests’ for ATSC 3.0.  The system requirements include a call for Ultra-High Definition (UHD) images, new solutions for audio, incorporation of new user technologies such as second screen, and incorporation of broadband connectivity.

Currently, development of the physical layer is well underway, and TG3 has also turned its attention to the middle and upper layers.   The middle layers manage and move the content and its associated metadata as well as manage the operation of the system.  The upper layers include presentation functions and applications, both of which include functions that directly interface with the viewers.  It is here that the video and audio encoding functions reside as well as interactive applications such as incorporating second screens.

To seriously support mobile reception, received signal strength is the key factor.  Keeping received signal strength high enough for mobile data connections relies on transmitter power and location.  These issues were addressed by wireless carriers with a dense cell network, but broadcasters can solve the same problem with sparse cell networks; especially when the service is one to many.  We will look at the differences between LTE and ATSC 3.0 system and show why ATSC 3.0 can support mobile devices better than LTE.

Questions?

Contact Murat Karsi, San Diego BTS Chapter Chair, mailto:mkarsi@ieee.org, (760)-419-8524

About the Speakers

Dr. Richard Chernock

Dr. Chernock is currently Chief Science Officer at Triveni Digital. In that position, he is developing strategic directions for monitoring, content distribution and metadata management for emerging digital television systems and infrastructures. Previously, he was a Research Staff Member at IBM Research, investigating digital broadcast technologies.

Dr. Chernock is active in many of the ATSC, SMPTE and SCTE standards committees, particularly in the areas of future DTV, monitoring, metadata, and data broadcast. He is chairman of the ATSC Technology Group on ATSC 3.0 (TG3) and chairs the AHG on service delivery and synchronization for ATSC 3.0. He was previously chairman of the ATSC Technology and Standards Group (TG1). He is also the Distinguished Lecturer Chair for IEEE BTS.

In another life, he used transmission electron microscopy to study materials characteristics for advanced ceramics packaging and semiconductor technology at IBM.   His ScD was from MIT in the field of nuclear materials engineering.

Luke Fay

Luke Fay is a Senior Staff SW Systems Engineer for Sony Semiconductor’s Component Solutions Business Division. Currently he is involved with ATSC and its efforts toward developing the next generation TV broadcast standards.  He has over 16 years of experience in digital communications systems engineering and receiver design and received an MS degree in electrical engineering from National Technological University.

He was named vice-chair of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) Technology Group 3 (TG3), which will develop standards for the next generation of digital television broadcasting.  He was also named chair of ATSC TG3 Specialist Group on Physical Layer for ATSC 3.0 which will focus on the physical layer of the next generation DTV standard.