ATSC approves A/322 physical layer specification amendment

ATSC Standards Update: A/322 Amendment Approved

The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) has announced that an Amendment to A/322, “Physical Layer Protocol,” has been approved by the ATSC membership and published on its web site. The amendment specifies MIMO, Channel Bonding, LDM, and their combinations in the physical layer, in order to support a significant throughput increase or spectral flexibility. The amendment also adds TxID signal generation complying with MIMO signals.

In A/322, optional technologies MIMO and Channel Bonding nearly double the capacity by introducing additional spatial and frequency resources; LDM in A/322 enables enhanced performance based on spectrum reuse multiplexing. Despite these advantages, combining LDM, MIMO, and Channel Bonding is precluded or limited in A/322. The changes described in this document were developed in order to enable the combinations among LDM, MIMO, and Channel Bonding. The amendment also adds necessary descriptions, lacking in the currently published version of the standard, regarding MIMO and Channel Bonding operations. Descriptions for TxID are additionally revised to enable related functionality in MIMO transmission.

A new version of A/322 that integrates the amendment into the standard will be published soon.