BROADCAST TECHNOLOGIES RESEARCH
CONTRIBUTION TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE
NORTH AMERICAN DIGITAL TELEVISION SYSTEM
Metin Akgun, Ph.D., P.Eng., LMIEEE
Summary
On January 9, 2009 at the International Consumer
Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas the National Academy of Television
Arts and Sciences presented the 60th Annual Technology & Engineering
Emmy Awards. At this event the organizations which were involved in the
development, testing and evaluation and finally standardization of the
North American digital television system including HDTV were recognized
and presented an Emmy award each (See Fig 1). The Advanced Television
Evaluation Laboratory (ATEL) of the Broadcast Technologies Research Branch
of the Communications Research Centre in Ottawa was one of the Emmy award
recipients.
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Many distinguished researchers, engineers and technologists including a number of IEEE members at various levels up to the Fellow level were involved in the establishment of the Broadcast Technologies Research Branch and contributed to its research projects. At this point in time, the Broadcast Technologies Research Branch is the only research laboratory in North America that is neither funded nor associated with a broadcaster or manufacturer and can therefore develop and test technologies and systems without any commercial considerations.
The following is a historical perspective, how the Broadcast Technologies
Research Branch was created, its achievements and its involvement in the
design, evolution and evaluation of advanced television technologies and
systems that have led to the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC)
standard for the North American digital television system, including HDTV.
1. Background
In the early 1970’s the Japanese National Broadcaster NHK started research into the next generation of television with the goal to achieve a picture resolution that would be twice as high as the then existing television systems worldwide.
Towards the end of the 1970’s they had progressed sufficiently to prove that such a higher resolution television system was technically feasible. They also had made several contributions to the International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) relevant Broadcasting Study Groups. They eventually developed their analog HDTV system MUSE for satellite broadcasting.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) at that time had a significant engineering department that not only was providing technical support to its operation, but also was planning for the future technical evolution of the Corporation. In the Planning Department Mr. Kenneth Davies was quite aware of the developments at the NHK. In the 1970’s there still existed in Canada a sizable broadcast equipment manufacturing industry. The CBC had over many years, through their Engineering Department, fostered a number of new products in the industry through their purchasing policy. Such equipment eventually found good international markets. However the CBC also recognized that there was a need to provide larger support than the CBC could provide in order for this industry to make the necessary transition towards a next generation of broadcast technologies. In order to convince government and industry of the impending changes in broadcast technologies, with the leadership of Ken Davies the CBC and the then existing Department of Communication (DOC) of the Government of Canada convened in 1982 the first High Definition Television (HDTV) Colloquium in Ottawa, Canada. This was also the world’s first conference (colloquium) dedicated entirely to HDTV.
This colloquium demonstrated very convincingly and visibly that a technological transition was going to happen in broadcasting in the not too distant future. This change would not only have an impact on the equipment manufacturing industry, but also potentially impact the use of the radio spectrum. Since the DOC was responsible for the management of the radio spectrum for the benefit of Canadians, the DOC decided to carry out a comprehensive study regarding the evolution of broadcasting.
In 1983 an extensive contract was awarded to Nordicity, a consulting company with expertise in broadcasting to carry out such a study. Significant input to this study was provided, among others, by the CBC. In addition in 1985 a second HDTV Colloquium was organized which attracted speakers and delegates from around the globe. It further demonstrated the rapid evolution of new broadcast technologies, in particular for television. Further HDTV conferences were organized in 1987, 1990, 1993 and finally 1996, at which time digital television and HDTV had found its way into many other conferences and hence there was no need to continue with these workshops.
Creation of the Broadcast Technologies Research Branch
The results of the Nordicity study highlighted the need for the DOC to develop in-house expertise to provide guidance both with respect to the development of an industrial development policy and perhaps more importantly to guide its spectrum management responsibility. As a result the DOC decided in 1986 to establish a broadcast research capability at the Communications Research Centre (CRC). The responsibility to establish a Broadcast Technologies Research Branch at the CRC was given to Dr. William Sawchuk, who just had completed the management of certain research activities regarding the Canadian teletext technology Telidon. A number of the researchers who had been involved in the Telidon development, in particular in its application to broadcasting were assigned to this new branch. Dr. Metin Akgun was appointed Director for the Television Broadcast Technologies Research division.
The CRC was fortunate that at this time the Assistant Deputy Minister, who was responsible for Spectrum Management and Information Technology, was Mr. Richard Stursberg, who both recognized the potential impact of future broadcast technologies and furthermore that any research in such a new area would require significant new and expensive equipment to permit timely and state of the art research to be conducted. In addition to the normal resource allocation to this new branch, he also agreed to provide additional $500,000 per year for 5 years for the necessary equipment purchases.
The Broadcast Technologies Research Branch was also to carry out research in advanced sound broadcasting systems. In Europe some research was being carried out to establish a digital sound broadcasting system that would be superior to FM Radio in both sound quality as well as in its propagation characteristics. The remainder of this document will only deal with the television technology aspect of the Broadcast Technologies Research Branch.
Collaboration with the Canadian Broadcast Industry
From the experience that had been gained in the development of the Telidon technology and its transfer to the industry, Dr. Yun Foo Lum, who was made responsible for broadcast systems and standards, immediately created the Canadian Advanced Broadcast Systems Committee (CABSC) including industry, research and government groups.
Collaboration with the USA Broadcast Industry
In about 1986 the federal Communications Commission (FCC) was under the pressure to provide additional radio spectrum for the growing need for mobile radio communications. The FCC recognized that a significant amount of the higher UHF band originally allocated to television broadcasting was largely underutilized by the broadcast industry. This frequency band was at that time a highly desirable piece of spectrum; the FCC suggested that it may be reallocated from broadcasting to mobile radio communication. This suggestion prompted a significant reaction from the broadcast industry. While until that time the US broadcast industry had shown little interest in HDTV, they suddenly realized that they may need this spectrum to implement HDTV also in the USA. In order to convince the FCC and legislators in the Congress, they set up in 1987 with the support of NHK a MUSE HDTV demonstration transmitter in Washington, D.C. The broadcasters did realize, however, that the MUSE system may not necessarily be suitable for the USA as a terrestrial television broadcast technology and something different may eventually have to be developed.
The FCC in the USA decided to create a Blue-Ribbon committee from the executives of the television broadcast industry including the equipment manufacturing industry, terrestrial off-air broadcasters, cable television networks and satellite broadcasters to deal with the development and selection of a future HDTV system. It was named the Advisory Committee for Advanced Television Systems (ACATS). Richard Wiley, a well known communications industry lawyer and former chairman of the FCC was appointed chairman of ACATS. ACATS created several working subcommittees to deal with the various aspects of the development, testing and implementation of a future advanced television system.
The establishment of such a high level industry committee in the USA, prompted the DOC in Canada to also establish a high level industry committee in Canada instead of the working level CABSC. The new committee was named Advanced Broadcast Systems of Canada (ABSOC).
Since it was important for the Broadcast Technologies Research Branch at the CRC to know what the thinking in the Canadian Broadcast Industry would be regarding the future of broadcast technologies, the Director of the Television Technologies Research division, at his request, was permitted to attend the ABSOC meetings as an observer. Very soon ABSOC members recognized that they in turn needed some expert technical advise in order to make sensible decisions. Thus the Broadcast Technologies Research Branch once again actively started working together with ABSOC, representing the industry to the benefit of both parties.
In Canada it is the Government of Canada that had, and still has, the legal authority to reach agreements with the USA regarding the use and sharing of the spectrum, in particular at the long border regions between Canada and the USA. Hence the DOC representing the Government of Canada was regularly dealing with the FCC regarding spectrum use policies.
Since the meetings of the Working Groups of ACATS were open to all, and recognizing that ABSOC had made the decision that a future Canadian advanced television system had to be compatible with that in the USA as had been the case for the extant NTSC system, the Broadcast Technologies Research Branch researchers started attending the relevant ACATS Working Groups as well as making well appreciated technical contributions to them.
Very early in the advanced television system development the Broadcast Technologies Research Branch and the DOC’s Spectrum Regulations Branch came to an important understanding, that while the Broadcast Technologies Research Branch could and should participate in the technical development of an advanced television system, it would not engage in any policy decisions; these were to be handled by the DOC and the FCC as the appropriate government representatives.
Development of the North American Advanced Television System
In the USA ACATS decided, in order to provide the best advanced television system, that the development and selection of a system should be decided through a competitive process. The competition would be wide open and proposed systems would have to pass a rigorous testing process.
In order to test the systems the broadcast industry in the USA set up the Advanced Television Test Centre ATTC) in Alexandria, Virginia. The test laboratory was headed by Peter Fannon. This laboratory was primarily going to test the proposed systems’ transmission – propagation characteristics, in particular their performance in a multipath environment as well as their interference into existing television transmissions and their susceptibility to the existing NTSC television signals. Quality of the pictures were to be evaluated by so-called expert viewers. This included professionals from the television and film industry.
However it was also recognized that the evaluation of the picture quality by expert viewers was not sufficient. There was a need to know how non-expert viewers, that is ordinary viewers of television would evaluate and compare different systems.
The Broadcast Technologies Research Branch’s Television Transmission Research group under its manager Bernard Caron (currently VP of Broadcast Technologies Research Branch) participated in the transmission and propagation tests as well as made significant contributions to these tests by developing test procedures. During the teletext development years, in order to evaluate the performance of digital teletext signals embedded in the analog NTSC signal, significant amount of terrestrial propagation path multipath characteristics had been collected which permitted to simulate in the laboratory these paths in support of developing transmission technology for teletext systems. This information was shared with ATTC and provided the testing process with realistic bounds for the transmission and modulation system evaluation.
During the Telidon system development at the CRC it was realized that there was a need to better understand the human-machine interface for a system to be accepted by users. A small group of industrial psychologists were involved in this process. These experts eventually got involved in the evaluation of the proposed advanced television systems with non-expert viewers. The ATTC in the USA did not have this expertise. The CRC had this expertise and it also recognized this as an opportunity to have a decisive influence in the selection and standardization of the future advanced television system for North America. The CRC researchers had already in the past been involved in the development and refinement of the ITU-R Recommendation 500, dealing with the visual assessment of television images.
The CRC therefore made the offer to ACATS to provide a video quality evaluation facility at the Broadcast Technologies Research Branch. With the acceptance of this offer, largely based on the recognition that the CRC had the necessary credentials and expertise, and furthermore that it was an industry-independent research organization and hence unbiased, the Advanced Television Evaluation Test Laboratory (ATEL) was created. Its first Manager was Dr. Paul Hearty (now with Ryerson University in Toronto). This laboratory was later integrated into the Video Signal Processing group under its manager André Vincent.
Fig 2. Viewing Room of ATEL. The lighting level and colour of the back-lit viewing wall meets the requirements of ITU-R Recommendation 500. Viewers are seated at a distance as is appropriate for HDTV or Standard TV.
Fig 3. Control and Switching Room Equipment to display images in the ATEL
Viewing Room
This laboratory meets and exceeds all the environmental requirements prescribed in ITU-R Recommendation 500 with respect to lighting, ambient noise level, viewing distance, etc. The key requirement for meeting the ITU-R Recommendation 500 was the design of the back-lit wall where the display screen was to be inserted for viewing of the test image sequences. To meet the colour temperature and light intensity of this translucent wall, a complex lighting system had to be designed. Mainly dimmable fluorescent tubes were used and over some of them translucent colour tapes had to be wrapped to achieve the Recommendation 500 colour temperature requirements. In addition the wall had to allow interchanging of display screens with different aspect ratios; primarily 3 x 4 for standard television and 16 x 9 for HDTV.
ATEL is the only picture quality evaluation laboratory in Canada and perhaps
in North America that meets all these requirements (See Figs 2 and 3).
For the selection of non-expert viewers rigorous procedures were established,
insuring that these viewers had good vision, were not connected in any
way professionally to the television or film industry and also had not
participated previously in any picture quality evaluation tests. For this
purpose Carleton University in Ottawa was retained for the screening of
viewers.
The initial call by ACATS for proposals prompted close to 20 responses.
Many of them were no more than ideas or paper designs. When the time came
to actually deliver a prototype and pay a testing fee, only seven systems
from following organizations were ready:
Sarnoff
General Instruments
MIT
Philips
Zenith
AT&T
NHK
Eventually NHK withdrew from the competition, since they felt, that their MUSE system was already being used in Japan and had been proven to provide a satisfactory HDTV service. Certainly they also may have sensed that the USA industry was favoring a made-in-USA solution.
Most of the other proposed systems were analog and tried to provide some backward compatibility with the existing NTSC system by providing the additional high definition enhancement information on a separate channel. Only General Instruments provided the world’s fully digital advanced television system, capable of providing HDTV. It was a real breakthrough. Furthermore it could be transmitted in a regular 6 MHz television channel, thus it was also in terms of radio spectrum use efficient.
The first round of tests showed that none of the six systems were able to meet all the requirements that had been specified. This was true with respect to transmission interference, etc. as well as with respect to picture quality and some visible artifacts. The two testing laboratories recognized that all proposed systems could be corrected with additional design effort. While often there were arguments regarding the test results and their interpretation, the rigour that the ATEL applied to its testing process, its results were never questioned – the CRC certainly was proud of this achievement.
During the first phase of testing there also emerged a realization, that the future advanced television system should be fully digital. In all the presented systems already significant digital signal processing was taking place. In a second round of testing a number of the proponents contemplated to replace their original systems with fully digital systems.
In order to avoid any future litigation by potential losers in a second round of testing, ACATS Chairman Richard Wiley suggested that all six proponents create a so called Grand Alliance and merge their systems into a single system by using the best parts of each of the original systems to design a final advanced television system. With some arm twisting this was finally achieved in May 1993. This was considered at that time a master stroke of Chairman Richard Wiley.
The final testing took place about a year later in both the ATTC and ATEL. In parallel the newly created Advanced Television System Committee (ATSC) started developing the standards documents so that a standard could be submitted to the FCC shortly after the completion of all tests.
Like in any larger engineering project there are sometimes unexpected problems that could delay the project and some ingenuity is needed to overcome them. At one point some tapes containing visual test material showed some visible artifacts at the edges of some frames, which would adversely impact the visual evaluation test results at ATEL. Recreating corrected new test material could have caused several months of delay in the test schedule, which was considered highly undesirable. While ATTC was adamant that new test tapes had to be produced, at ATEL the scientists, engineers and technicians found a way to hide these artifacts during the viewing tests. They were also able to demonstrate to ATTC and the proponents, that the measures taken would in no way put the test results in any doubt. Such things get forgotten in the long run but are part of the long saga of developing the Advanced Television System for North America.
Digital Television Coverage Studies
The transmission technology used by the North American digital television system is 8-VSB, similar to the transmission technology used in the NTSC system.
At the television UHF bands, large buildings and large natural elevations become a barrier for television signals to reach receivers. Furthermore, such obstructions also create multipaths, which in analog television produce ghosts on the receiver, but can prevent from any signal being decoded at all in a digital television receiver.
While this problem could be solved with additional transmitters operating on a different channel, this is highly undesirable from an efficient spectrum use point of view. Furthermore in large metropolitan areas where many different transmitters may provide different programs, there may not be additional television channels available to establish additional transmitters.
The European digital television system uses for transmission OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplex) technology. This technology can not only deal with multipath signals, it in fact can benefit from multipath signals in that it can use the additional power from the different paths.
Fig 4. Equipment at the Transmission Laboratory to simulate transmission
environments for testing and comparing robustness to transmission impairments
of different transmission and modulation technologies
Fig 5. Mobile Transmission Laboratory for television transmission and coverage tests (Picture shows tests being carried out at Parliament Hill in Ottawa)
Fig 6. Interior of the Mobile Transmission Laboratory for television transmission and coverage tests
Fig 7. Installation of an 8-VSB Gap-Filler transmitter
The Broadcast Technologies Research Branch carried out studies, laboratory simulation experiments and field trials to establish practical guidelines how on-channel “gap-fillers” could be deployed with the 8-VSB transmission system to overcome non reception or multipath problems (See Figures 4,5,6 and 7 for facilities for TV transmission research). This work was highly appreciated by ATSC since it solved a serious problem and also made the North American digital television system competitive in the marketplace vis-a-vis the European digital television system. Some joint field trials between Canada and the USA were also carried out in several USA metropolitan centres which also proved that on-channel gap-fillers were a viable solution.
Research with International Partners
The significance of the research carried out by the Broadcast Technologies Research Branch was noticed by many researchers and organizations in other countries who were interested in manufacturing and/or introducing advanced television systems in their own countries. In addition to USA organizations, organizations from the Republic of China (Taiwan), Peoples Republic of China (mainland), South Korea, Mexico and Brazil either contracted some research work to the Broadcast Technologies Research Branch or entered into collaborative research projects. In some instances collaborating organizations also sent researchers to the Communications Research Centre. Contracted or collaborative research covered transmission technologies, video signal processing and video quality assessment work.
Conclusions and the Future of Digital Television
The decision to establish a broadcast technologies research capability in Canada has proven to be highly fruitful and also is a perfect example of the capabilities of Canadian researchers, engineers and technologists to carry out world-class research with relatively modest resources. The Broadcast Technologies Research Branch continues to contribute towards the solution of many problems including the future use of broadcasting for new services and the possibility how to better utilize the broadcast spectrum by studying the potential use of broadcast channels not used for broadcasting for a variety of other wireless consumer services.
Most recently research is being carried out in mobile digital television. The challenge was to provide a robust and reliable television reception with the 8-VSB transmission system. The research in the Broadcast Technologies Research Branch has demonstrated that mobile television is indeed possible with the ATSC television system.
There is currently significant interest in 3D-Television. In particular the film industry recognizes this technology as an important means to capture a larger share of the viewing public. The Broadcast Technologies Research Branch has recently developed a 3-D image technology which is being considered as a candidate for standardization by ATSC.
Biography
Metin Akgun received his diploma in Electrical Engineering from Istanbul Technical University (Turkey) and his Ph. D. degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
During his career in Turkey, Switzerland and Canada he was involved in the development of solid state communication equipment for use over high voltage power lines, the development of digital telephone equipment and networks, the application of fibreoptic transmission systems for providing integrated communications services to homes.
In 1986 he was appointed as Director in the Broadcast Technologies Research Branch at the Communications Research Centre with the responsibility to establish a Television Broadcast Technologies Research division. The division made significant contributions towards the development of the North American digital television system including HDTV. In 1998 he became VP of the Broadcast Technologies Research Branch.
Dr. Akgun also represented for many years Canadian interests as head of delegation at the ITU-R’s Study Group 6 participating in the development of recommendations for broadcast services. He retired in December 2003.
27 February 2009
