Metadata Issues for ATSC Audio

In a Single Frequency Network (SFN) for Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) terrestrial digital television (DTV) system, the interferences induced by the multiple transmitters and/or repeaters using same frequency are unavoidable. To ease the interference handing in the SFN for ATSC DTV system, transmitter identification (TxID) signal is recommended in the ATSC terrestrial DTV system. The TxID signal is embedded in the ATSC DTV signal and transmitted from each transmitter and repeater within the SFN and in ATSC recommended practice (RP) A/111, Kasami sequence is recommended as the TxID signal. In this paper, we propose an additional data transmission scheme using the TxID signal. In the proposed scheme, the Kasami sequence not only acts as the conventional TxID of the SFN for ATSC terrestrial DTV system but also carriers the additional data bits on its polarity and the code phase.

In a single frequency network (SFN) for the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) terrestrial digital television (DTV) system, co-channel interference induced by the multiple transmitters and/or repeaters which use the same output channel is inevitable. Since the presence of interference results in the performance degradation of the SFN, it is crucial to manipulate the interference by adjusting the transmit power and the emission time of each transmitter and repeater within the SFN. In the ATSC terrestrial DTV system, in order to facilitate the interference manipulation process, a transmitter identification (TxID) signal which is embedded in the transmit signal from each transmitter and repeater is recommended. However, such an embedded signal may degrade the DTV signal quality even though the injection level of the TxID signal is very low compared to the DTV signal. Hence, the effect of the TxID signal on the DTV signal needs to be investigated before deploying the SFN with TxID signal. In this paper, the effect of the TxID signal on the performance of legacy DTV receivers is investigated not only with extensive computer simulation but also with laboratory and field tests. According to the various test results, the average performance loss of the conventional DTV receiver due to the TxID signal is less than 0.2 dB when the TxID signal is injected at 30 dB below the DTV signal power.

This paper describes the architecture, functionality, and design of HDVO-a high definition video co-processor from Philips Semiconductors. The coprocessor design is modular and functionally complete, and is intended to be a part of and function as the primary picture/video composition hardware in any media-processor chip targeted at Digital Television (DTV) applications. Essentially a screen-refresh engine, HDVO can mix multiple video and graphics planes and is capable of scaling vertically and horizontally pictures of the highest resolution (1920/spl times/1080) specified in the DTV standard prescribed by the United States Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC). HDVO can efficiently process all (eighteen) ATSC video formats, including video generation for picture-in-picture display, and is currently being wed as an on-chip video coprocessor in the TM-2700 digital television chip. TM-8700 is the second generation of an architectural family of programmable multimedia processors from Philips Semiconductors and it not only supports all ATSC formats, from standard-definition to wide-angle high-definition video, but has also the power to handle High-Definition Television (HDTV) video and audio source decoding (high-level MPEG-2, AC-3 and ProLogic audio, closed captioning, etc.) as well as the flexibility to process advanced interactive services.

Several previous studies have demonstrated that additional low-rate data can be transmitted in Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) terrestrial digital television (DTV) systems by modulating the polarity of the transmitter identification (TxID) signal. Previously proposed additional-data transmission schemes can offer an additional reliable transmission channel, and thus they have a very large coverage area compared to that of a DTV signal. Unfortunately, as the cost of a reliable transmission, they have a limitation in their maximum data rate. In this paper, we propose a new additional data transmission scheme based on sequence phase modulation (SPM) to increase the data rate. The proposed scheme exploits not only the polarity but also the phase of a TxID signal, and thus it significantly enhances the data rate compared to conventional schemes.

New digital television standards are emerging to meet the demand for new services from TV broadcasters, as well as to support new high-resolution audio and video formats available on the market. In Brazil, the Brazilian Digital TV System (SBTVD) Forum defines the standard to be adopted. Among the currently available physical layer technologies, the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) 3.0 standard offers great flexibility in operating modes, depending on the broadcasters’ requirements and propagation conditions, for both fixed and mobile reception. This allows the system to be configured to balance robustness and transmission efficiency. This paper presents the performance test results in various mobile reception scenarios in the city of Rio de Janeiro, using an ATSC 3.0 signal with a transmission rate of 32.3 Mbps in a <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2\times 2$</tex-math> </inline-formula> Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) configuration. The results showed a reception success rate of 53.6%, with an increase in reception errors for Carrier-to-Noise Ratio (C/N) lower than 26 dB. Furthermore, reception errors were detected with greater intensity when the received signal level was below -70 dBm. Although the overall success rate was around 50%, the complementary metrics (C/N threshold, RSSI, and PLP0 error behavior) were consistent with theoretical expectations, demonstrating that ATSC 3.0 performs effectively under real urban mobility conditions at high spectral efficiency. ATSC 3.0 thus proved effective in broadcast transmission, meeting the needs for ultra-high-definition (UHD) audio and video broadcasting.

&lt;p&gt;Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) 3.0, the new generation digital terrestrial television standard, has been designed for facing the new challenges of the future broadcasting systems. ATSC 3.0 has been built using the most recent cutting-edge technologies. Layered division multiplexing (LDM) is one of the major components of the new system baseline. LDM provides a tool to make flexible use of the spectrum for delivering simultaneous services to stationary and mobile services. This paper presents the performance evaluation of ATSC 3.0 core services in mobile scenarios using LDM. Simulation results are presented to analyze the influence of different LDM ensemble configuration modes for mobile reception. The simulation results have been also confirmed by laboratory tests under different channel models. The signal to noise ratio threshold values confirm the excellent behavior of ATSC 3.0 and LDM in mobile and portable scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;

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This paper proposes an improved additional data transmission (ADT) system based on low density parity check (LDPC) code which can transmit an additional data stream in the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) terrestrial digital television system. The LDPC code based ADT system can offer an additional data of rate up to a few megabits per second (Mbps) which is significantly increased compared to the conventional data transmission schemes used in the transmitter identification system.

A quiet revolution is taking place in television broadcasting. The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) 3.0, the very first Internet Protocol (IP)-based terrestrial digital television (DTV) broadcasting standard, has started commercial service in the Republic of Korea. For the first time ever, 4K ultrahigh-definition (UHD) TV signals are being broadcast over the air as a national DTV service. The Winter Olympics in 2018 will be the first Olympics broadcast in 4K UHD directly to TV receivers. And, in the United States, the Federal Communications Commission is in a rulemaking process to allow broadcasters to begin transmitting ATSC 3.0-compatible signals.

The Advanced Television System Committee (ATSC) is currently developing the next-generation U.S. Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) standard, known as ATSC 3.0. Two disruptive technologies for the physical layer are being evaluated, Layer Division Multiplexing (LDM) and Time Frequency Slicing (TFS). LDM consist in the transmission of a signal composed of two independent signals (layers) which are superimposed together at different power levels. These two layer can be configured with the desired robustness and capacity. LDM enables the efficient provision of services addressed to mobile and fixed reception in a more efficient way than the classical Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM) and Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) since full bandwidth and transmission time are used in both layers. However, practical operation is restricted due to several implementation constraints such as the use of common parameters and transmitter blocks for both layers (e.g. a common time interleaver). The use of TFS allows for an improved frequency diversity by the distribution of the service data across multiple Radio Frequency (RF) channels instead of using a single RF channel. The paper investigates the potential gains provided by the increased frequency diversity with TFS in conjunction with LDM.

As a supplement to the Global Positioning System (GPS) in an urban center and indoor environment, the digital television (DTV) segment sync signal can be employed to obtain a mobile user’s position. Two DTV receivers and a counter are integrated to measure the time difference of arrival (TDOA) for a pair of received signals from a transmitter and its corresponding repeater (DTVR). Using the measurements from a transmitter and its multiple corresponding DTVR pairs, the mobile user position can be estimated using the recursive least square method. An experiment done in Seoul using two low-grade high resolution digital television (HDTV) receivers and a two-channel universal counter demonstrates that the mean value of the mobile user position measurement is accurate to 42.58 meters circular error probability (CEP).

This paper covers the audio content delivery processes currently used throughout the video industry with a specific focus on the cable distribution infrastructure. This infrastructure has, for the first time, the capability of delivering high quality digital audio services and programming to subscribers' homes. These systems give the subscriber the ability to make new listening choices, based on their own needs and desires. Enabling these new subscriber choices requires greater care than ever before in preserving all the audio information from its original creation through the programmer uplinks and cable headends to the subscriber's home. Historically, each signal routing point between content origination and the subscriber's home has applied some processing to the signals as they pass through; providing the highest quality audio with these new features to the subscriber requires rethinking many of the current practices such that the actual digital audio information is carried without manipulation through to the subscriber's home. These new features are supported by the metadata carried within the Dolby Digital bitstream, and this paper describes this metadata and how to put it to proper use in cable delivery systems.

This paper presents a research of current practices in audio description broadcast in Spanish television channels. The results of this research show that in some television channels the audio description is broadcasted in 'receiver mix audio description' mode while in other channels the alternative used is 'broadcaster mix audio description' mode. In both cases, correct signalling and correct audio description coding is crucial so that digital television receivers can recognize audio description in the broadcast signal and reproduce it upon user request. The current practice of audio description broadcast in Spanish television channels only partially fulfils DVB standard. In addition, not all digital television receivers are able to reproduce appropriately the wide range of options defined in DVB to convey audio description in the television channels. The consequence for the users is less availability of audio description services than expected. Some of the problems detected for the activation of audio description in users' receivers can be solved by applying some enhancement to signalling information used by broadcasters in their DVB television channels. Finally, some recommendations for the users are included to present the key aspects for audio description activation in their digital television receivers.

In this paper, we propose an additional data transmission scheme for the ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) terrestrial DTV (digital television) systems based on a low rate systematic irregular repeat-accumulate (SIRA) code. Unlike the previously proposed additional data transmission scheme using TxID (transmitter identification) signals, the proposed scheme conjuncted with a DTV VSB signal cancellation technique is suitable for high data transmission. Compared to the previous additional data transmission scheme based on a low rate systematic repeat-accumulate code, the BER performance of the proposed scheme is significantly improved. The additional data is encoded with a simplified IRA channel coding scheme and injected to the conventional VSB signals with the bury ratio (BR) of -27 dB. With the proposed scheme, an additional data of rate up to 1 Mbps can be transmitted along with the ATSC terrestrial DTV signals by minimizing the detrimental effects on the ATSC terrestrial DTV systems.

Broadcasting has always been limited by interference between signals. With the introduction of digital terrestrial television broadcasting (DTTB) in the existing analog TV channels, interference remains a limiting factor in the post-transition era after analog signals are turned off and the spectrum is repacked. The use of first adjacent channels and the "UHF taboo channels" in the same community without transmitter spacing limits is unprecedented, and is a challenge to digital television (DTV) receiver designers. This paper discusses the nature of interference between DTV signals on adjacent and UHF taboo channels, and propose some solutions to receiver designers to mitigate the problem.