Coverage study of ATSC 3.0

The ATSC 3.0 next generation digital TV standard adopts state-of-the-art coding and modulation, as well as the new Layered Division Multiplexing (LDM) technology in addition to the traditional TDM/FDM. It is a very flexible system capable of combining different services in one RF channel with different robustness and reception conditions. The coverage for ATSC 3.0 is very different from the legacy one-tower-one-coverage ATSC 1.0 system. With the new enabling technologies, the ATSC 3.0 can greatly increase the coverage/service areas, reduce the distance between co-channel assignments, and introduce local program insertion and targeted advertisement. This paper discusses the ATSC 3.0 coverage and co-channel interference issues, using LDM technology with different operating parameters. Similar to LTE, the ATSC 3.0 co-channel assignment could be reduced to two times of service coverage radius (2R). This means an improvement of the spectrum efficiency by up to 4 times in comparison with today's system. The deployment of Single Frequency Network (SFN) can further improve the coverage and reduce the interference.