Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc.
ATSC 3.0 Physical Layer Extensions to Enable Mobility Broadcast 5G Convergence

Abstract:

The ATSC 3.0 physical layer broadcast standard is extended with new OFDM numerology, L1 signaling and frame structure aligned with 5G. This is done to enable improved broadcast mobility and convergence 5G release 16 as a Non-3GPP access network. The 5G core network and Broadcast core network interwork over defined interfaces to enable convergence layer 3. This enables improvements of broadcast physical layer for physics of broadcast. The 5G unicast physical layer is enhanced for physics of unicast, and then both are converged at layer 3. This is novel and has many benefits compared to the legacy LTE broadcast method (e.g., Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (eMBMS)), which combines both broadcast and unicast into a single shared LTE frame at layer 1. The eMBMS method is then improved for dominate unicast mode in shared L1 frame. The result is the broadcast performance and efficiency in eMBMS are less than optimal.