The Houston and Chicago DTV datacasting pilots including a datacast concept of operations

Digital Television datacasting is the injection of AES-256-encrypted video, data, or voice packets into normal broadcast stream of a television station, using a fraction of its null (unused) broadcast MPEG packets. The one-way datacast is immune to cellular congestion or physical damage. Authorized individuals or groups of users within the coverage of the TV station(s) configured for datacasting receive the transmitted video, data or voice content. The Department of Homeland Security has sponsored two pilot systems, one in Chicago, Illinois and a second in Houston, Texas. These pilots add to the cities that already had operating datacast systems, namely including Las Vegas, Nevada, Washington, DC, Boston, Massachusetts, and Norfolk, Virginia. These systems support situational awareness, wide-area video distribution, and command coordination and are available today, offering the most resilient broadband content to their system users. This paper provides a summary of the datacasting technology and describes the operation and use of the latest Houston and Chicago pilot systems, describes elements of a local, regional, statewide and nationwide concept of operations (CONOPS).