Transmitter Carrier Offset in ATSC 3.0 Systems: Laboratory Test Results over Multipath Fading Channels

Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) 3.0 standard has defined a transmitter carrier offset (TCO) insertion to avoid possible pilot contaminations at the coverage edge. Despite this adoption, the practical gain of ATSC 3.0 TCO has been less investigated so far. This paper verifies the advantage of TCO in multipath fading channel environments, particularly by using real hardware solutions. The laboratory tests specifically address the scenario with a single adjacent interferer and consider the Rayleigh fading channel with 20 multipath taps. Every measurement is obtained from a testbed with professional exciters and commercial receivers, which fully comply with ATSC 3.0 specifications. The measurement results explicitly show that inserting TCO is beneficial if an untrustworthy ATSC 3.0 signal coexists with the desired signal at the same radio band.