Performance Measurements of ATSC 3.0 MIMO System in Brazil: Field Tests

New digital television standards are emerging to meet the demand for new services from TV broadcasters, as well as to support new high-resolution audio and video formats available on the market. In Brazil, the Brazilian Digital TV System (SBTVD) Forum defines the standard to be adopted. Among the currently available physical layer technologies, the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) 3.0 standard offers great flexibility in operating modes, depending on the broadcasters’ requirements and propagation conditions, for both fixed and mobile reception. This allows the system to be configured to balance robustness and transmission efficiency. This paper presents the performance test results in various mobile reception scenarios in the city of Rio de Janeiro, using an ATSC 3.0 signal with a transmission rate of 32.3 Mbps in a$2\times 2$Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) configuration. The results showed a reception success rate of 53.6%, with an increase in reception errors for Carrier-to-Noise Ratio (C/N) lower than 26 dB. Furthermore, reception errors were detected with greater intensity when the received signal level was below -70 dBm. Although the overall success rate was around 50%, the complementary metrics (C/N threshold, RSSI, and PLP0 error behavior) were consistent with theoretical expectations, demonstrating that ATSC 3.0 performs effectively under real urban mobility conditions at high spectral efficiency. ATSC 3.0 thus proved effective in broadcast transmission, meeting the needs for ultra-high-definition (UHD) audio and video broadcasting.