'Futurecast' Proposal for ATSC 3.0 Undergoes Second Field Test in Madison

The first round of tests at WKOW in late August proved the viability of Futurecast to deliver 4K Ultra HD content and two "robust" mobile TV streams in a single 6-MHz channel, "while optimizing indoor reception and offering unparalleled spectrum efficiency," Futurecast’s backers said in a statement. The August test "collected nearly 50,000 pieces of data from scores of reception sites including challenging reception areas inside buildings, in fast-moving vehicles and at locations ranging from downtown to 50 miles from the transmitter," they said. Wednesday’s "follow-up testing" from 1 to 4 a.m. was to evaluate the "performance of hardware and software enhancements" and share the experience "with key members of the broadcast and TV industries," including representatives of the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association, they said.

Among Futurecast’s benefits are data throughput increases of 30 percent and improved multipath performance, compared with the current DTV standard, for fixed and portable TV reception, its backers said. "The increased payload capacity of the physical layer combined with HEVC encoding will allow broadcasters many more options when planning their broadcast service offering." Its "superior RF approach addresses the co-channel and adjacent-channel interference challenges" that will be raised in the post-incentive spectrum auction repacking process, they said.

In the August field tests, "we were extremely pleased with everything we were able to get through the channel," said Wayne Luplow, vice president at LG’s Zenith R&D Lab in Lincolnshire, Illinois, in an interview Thursday. The system also performed well in penetrating buildings at large distances, "which has been a major concern for broadcasters and others," Luplow said. "Going 50 miles out and being able to get into buildings at two in the morning is not an easy task. But we did get to places like that. We collected a lot of data."

Futurecast "did pick up a few little things where we thought we could still do some tweaks on the transmission system, and those tweaks have been done," Luplow said. Once Wednesday's test was underway, "the guys [were to] be out in our field-test van looking to see if the tweaks were in the right direction. That’s why we’re doing this because the proof of the pudding is the fine-tuning that you sometimes have to do with parameters."

Brady Dreasler, Quincy corporate director-engineering, was in on the August field trials, "and what sticks in my mind is being 40 to 50 miles out at a Walmart in the middle of the night, in the middle of the store," and the signal "was rock-solid," he told us last week. "The robustness of the signal and the consistency of the signal and survivability of the signal is what thoroughly impressed me. Even 70, 75 miles out, outdoors, mobile, it was still rock-solid.

Of the decision to take WKOW down for three hours under experimental FCC authority for the Wednesday morning field test, "yeah, it is a sacrifice" commercially, Dreasler said. "But we have our eyes in the long haul. Where’s this taking us? Where are we going to be 10 years from now? We want to know how we’re going to get to where we want to get." Going into Wednesday morning, WKOW’s plan was not to formally announce the test to the public, Dreasler told us. "We haven’t really alerted the public other than when we do make the switch, we tell them that we’re going off the air for some transmitter testing. But we just didn’t want to confuse the public. At the end of the day, we don’t think the public is quite ready to consume this." It would take "no more than two minutes to make the change back" and return to live programming in the unforeseen event of a local emergency, he said.

Aside from "verifying" that the tweaks Futurecast put in place have worked, the "more important" purpose of the Wednesday demonstrations was letting the industry and those involved in the ATSC 3.0 standards process know that Futurecast "is for real," said Jay Adrick, technology adviser to GatesAir. "It’s technology that can be deployed and is being deployed." It’s hoped that the demonstration would prove that Futurecast meets the technology "goals for the next generation of digital television," Adrick said. "That’s a very important step in the process toward making the decisions as to what the final format of ATSC 3.0 will be."

In demonstrating Futurecast, "we’re not trying to do an end-run around the ATSC process," Luplow said. "We have a lot of people working within the process." In Futurecast, "all we’re demonstrating at the moment is the physical layer" that’s being proposed for ATSC 3.0, he said. In the end, whether Futurecast will be adopted in its entirety or married with other proposals as the physical layer for ATSC 3.0, "we don’t know," Luplow said. When trying to piece together into one physical layer system several component parts from different proponents, as many within the ATSC 3.0 process have advocated, "I personally am not convinced that you come up with the optimum solution. But that’s just a personal opinion. We’ll just have to see what comes out of the ATSC process."

Asked whether there has been an effort to combine the best attributes of different physical layer proposals into one composite system for ATSC 3.0, Luplow said: "Clearly, we are aware of what other people have done. We’ve done some talking with other proponents, but I think it’s best to say there really has not been an effort for any type of an alliance or a merger or anything like that."