ATSC 3.0 and Wireless Emergency Alerting – a Great Match

When disasters strike, it is imperative that lines of communication remain open so that the public can receive important and potentially lifesaving updates from authorized authorities. For television and radio broadcasters this information has been provided by Emergency Alert System (EAS) announcements and through newscasts and weather alerts. Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) were developed to deliver similar announcements to the public via cellular networks if they are within the targeted area. But what happens if cellular service is compromised due to disaster? ​In 2017 the Federal Communications adopted a new, voluntary television broadcast standard developed by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), a standard development organization. The new standard, ATSC 3.0 (also known as NEXTGEN TV), is built on a robust over-the-air broadcast platform and utilizes an Internet Protocol core.i ​Could ATSC 3.0 be a solution during widespread outages to deliver critical messages to mobile devices? This paper explores this issue and will describe a tested solution.

Fred Engel | PBS North Carolina | Research Triangle Park, N.C., United States
Chris Lamb | Device Solutions Inc. | Morrisville, N.C., United States