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Formal BEITC sessions began on Saturday 5 April 2025, the day before the NAB exhibits opened. The following summaries in Part 1 were the weekend BEIT sessions most relevant to TV engineers working with ATSC 3.0. Part 2 will cover the most relevant TV sessions on Monday and Tuesday.

One of the first relevant sessions was with Jay Willis, NextGen Deployment Manager at One Media Technologies. His presentation of “Beyond the Cloud: Native Broadcasting with ATSC 3.0,”described the workflow for Sinclair ATSC 3.0 broadcasting. Unlike its 1.0 predecessor, ATSC 3.0 is entirely IP-based, meaning it uses the same packetized data structures as modern internet communications. This design enables NextGen TV services to be delivered seamlessly to televisions, set-top boxes, home gateways, and a wide variety of other connected and unconnected portable and mobile devices.

At most sites, OneMedia Technologies use Ateme Titan Edge to encode a transport stream, which is then sent over Zixi to AWS. This is our transport into the cloud, but any transport stream encoder will work. Transport streams are typically carried over User Datagram Protocol (UDP). UDP is susceptible to packet loss, jitter, and out-of-order delivery because it lacks built in error correction. To mitigate this, we use protected streaming protocols such as SRT, Zixi and RIST. Each protocol improves upon basic UDP transport streams by providing error recovery, retransmission, and adaptive bitrate control.

As the industry gears up to meet an anticipated sunset of ATSC 1.0, the industry will need to rapidly transition all stations to ATSC 3.0. Sinclair has deployed 35 host stations and 12 hosted sites over the past four years. However, a mandated transition would require much faster, planned, and organized deployment. By leveraging the cloud, broadcasters can scale and streamline this process dramatically.

“Optimizing ATSC 3.0 Spectrum Utilization with Dynamic Resource Allocation and Management” was presented by Nick Hottinger, Sr. Systems Engineer at ONE Media Technologies. Modern standards like ATSC 3.0 include technologies that enhance spectrum efficiency, such as advanced video codecs, an adaptable physical layer, and support for diverse data transmission. However, fully realizing the potential of these innovations remains an ongoing challenge. ATSC 3.0 offers flexible physical layer configuration options like Physical Layer Pipes (PLPs), which allows a broadcaster to customize their channel design for different applications, such as mobile reception or high-capacity service delivery. ATSC 3.0 also upgrades from the outdated MPEG-2 codec to HEVC, which provides up to 200% encoding efficiency improvement, and shifts from MPEG-TS to IP-based technology.

ATSC has introduced a solution based on a broadcast core network (BCN) and System Manager. The BCN is a control layer that coordinates activities across multiple stations. The BCN would allow user interaction to negotiate channel resources for different applications and interfaces with the System Manager to implement the application at individual stations. The System Manager controls all devices and related resources in the ATSC 3.0 air chain. It modifies channel resources based on time-based or authorized external triggers to implement actions received from the BCN.

The infrastructure described improves efficiency by up to 20% and reduces or eliminates null packets in a PLP, providing new monetization opportunities. Applications like automotive connectivity to provide software updates and other upgrades, CDN offload offering improvement to real-time content delivery, and enhanced GPS using ATSC 3.0 to improve GPS accuracy have the potential for a significant total addressable market.

“NEXTGEN Incident Response Communication System - Using ATSC 3.0” was roundtable discussion featuring Fred Engel of Device Solutions Inc., Tim Bagnall and Dan Wesely of Mosaic ATM, Mark Corl of Triveni Digital, Chris Pandich and Don Smith with PBS North Carolina, Jim Stenberg with Over The Air RF Consulting LLC, and Tony Sammarco and Chris Lamb with Device Solutions Inc.

The session provided an update of a NASA research project investigating the use of a mobile ATSC 3.0 datacasting station to help support wildland fire management operations. The session discussed a proposed innovation called the NextGen Incident Response Communication System (NIRCS). NIRCS is a rapidly deployable, mobile, long-range broadcast communications system using ATSC 3.0 technology on 470 (US UHF channel 14) to 608 MHz (US UHF channel 36).

The digital terrestrial broadcast system is built on the internet protocol (IP) to enable one-way datacasting of IP-compatible data, including UHD video, high-fi audio, and other types of unique data packets such as aircraft position messages.

Sunday Sessions

NAB exhibits opened to tsunamis of visitors at 10am. An hour later, Mark Corl of Triveni Digital, Vladimir Anishchenko, Ph.D. with Avateq Corp. and Tariq Mondal with NAB presented “BPS Mesh Network Initial Deployment Report.” It described the ATSC 3.0 Broadcast Positioning System (BPS) mesh network. Within the continental United States, an antenna mounted on each transmission tower at a height of 50m (164 feet), would be able to receive as many as 70 transmissions at a broad range of frequencies given the target BPS PLP configuration if all high-power transmitters were equipped with the BPS technology.

Part of the reason for easy reception is because BPS is low bandwidth data. The new synchronization system leads to an opportunity to build an extremely robust time transfer system of multiple transmitters, using multiple disparate frequencies and traceable time sources known as a BPS Mesh Network.

In a nationwide deployment of the BPS network, it is expected that the functionality at each transmitter node would be essentially the same with some "leader" transmitters having time traceable to International Atomic Time (TAI). It is also expected that by adding additional time-keeping equipment, transmitters can move from "followers" to "leaders" and vice versa. This document assumes that all transmitters within receiving range are on separate frequencies, that is, form a multiple frequency network (MFN).

“Field Test of ATSC 3.0/BPS Precise Time Distribution” was presented by Jeff Sherman and David Howe, both with the Time and Frequency Division of NIST in Bolder CO. The BPS field test broadcast from Nexstar’s KWGN Denver CO was received at three BPS receiver sites including the KWGN studios, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder and WWVB in Ft Collins. The BPS time was compared with NIST UTC via GPS. Variations could be noted as the temperature and humidity as well as the one time during the field test when KWGN lowered transmitter output for maintenance purposes. It was a good beginning of proof of concept.

The time of transmission of each ATSC 3.0 frame’s Bootstrap word is encoded within the Preamble portion of the ATSC 3.0 data frame. A BPS synchronizer device, connected to a local reference clock, observes the ATSC 3.0 transmission close to the transmitter and encodes additional data for a distinct Physical Layer Pipe (PLP) within the frame relating the transmitted timestamps accurately to the reference clock, the transmitter’s spatial coordinates, and other metadata describing a local timing network. More BPS transmit and receiver site tests will reveal more.

Transferring traceable time to BPS-enabled ATSC 3.0 station” was presented by Francisco Girela Lopez and Ramki Ramakrishnan, both with Safran Electronics & Defense.

White Rabbit (WR) technology enhances synchronization accuracy beyond previous protocols by delivering sub-nanosecond time synchronization accuracy in Ethernet networks to thousands of nodes with high reliability and determinism and standardized as the High Accuracy profile in the IEEE 1588 (PTP) standard.

WR devices can monitor timing distribution networks in real-time, using multiple time references for redundant distribution or monitoring other nodes. They can select more than one reference clock, with backup and "survey" references configured. WR capabilities can be integrated into the SecureSync 2400 clock combiner, providing real-time data comparison and traceability to UTC time to BPS “Leader” and “Follower” nodes.

The system design, in collaboration with NIST, ensures the NIST time reference is 100% traceable and GNSS-independent, offering a resilient, precise, secure, and sovereign solution deployed on US soil. The network architecture, based on redundant and diverse optical paths, enhances security and performance, benefiting from existing GNSS constellations and other Complementary PNT technologies for improved resiliency and distributed GNSS reception monitoring.

“Broadcast and Digital out of Home (DOOH) – A Convergence Thru Datacasting” was presented by Ted Korte, VP Engineering and Technology at USSI Global.

DOOH environments include public spaces like streets, university campuses, commercial complexes, and other high-traffic zones ideal for advertising. Korte described broadcast TV as a “Lean Back” experience and DOOH TV as a “Passing By” experience. Both must effectively communicate their messages with minimal disruption to a viewer’s day. His paper examines the integration of dynamic content delivery via datacasting to enhance audience engagement in Digital Out of Home (DOOH) advertising. Edge devices using datacasting technology tailor commercial content to real-time audience presence using computer vision analytics (CVA).

“Broadcasting Without Boundaries: Seamlessly Integrating EAS into Virtualized Air-Chains,” presented by Bill Robertson and Ed Czarnecki, both with Digital Alert Systems.

This paper explores the evolution of EAS implementation, from analog switch-based systems to IP-based architectures, addressing insertion points, signal processing, and compliance requirements. By leveraging networked technologies, broadcasters can streamline EAS integration, enabling centralized and cloud-based operations while maintaining compliance with FCC and FEMA standards. Many want to adapt a system designed in the 1990s to work in a 21st-century transmission system.

Modern equipment and properly configured IP-based workflows eliminate most older barriers. Transitioning EAS to an IP-based architecture enables broadcasters to position devices in optimal locations, leveraging network connectivity for enhanced efficiency. Virtualized monitoring and compliance reporting integrates EAS into any air chain without changing FCC regulations.

"VVC Broadcast Deployment Update" was presented by Lukasz Litwic, Research Leader at Ericsson, and Justin Ridge, Principal Engineer at Nokia.

The VVC (Versatile Video Coding) standard was developed jointly by ITU-T and ISO/IEC JTC1, finalized in July 2020. The basic architecture of VVC is like its predecessor, H.265/HEVC. New technologies have been included that improve coding efficiency. In general, VVC can encode content using around 50% fewer bits than HEVC for the same subjective quality. However, the adoption of VVC has been slow, and mostly at the software level. At the moment, H.264 AVC is still much more popular than H.265 HEVC or VVC. The story of VVC is not yet complete because it is the best codec yet. The paper is intended to be a progress snapshot.