Evaluation of ATSC 3.0 and 3GPP Rel-17 5G Broadcasting Systems for Mobile Handheld Applications

This paper provides performance evaluations of two state-of-the-art terrestrial broadcasting systems, ATSC 3.0 and 3GPP Rel-17 5G broadcast, in terms of physical layer capability, network deployment and operating costs. The physical layer performances are evaluated in the mobile broadcasting environment, considering practical implementations of the handheld terminals. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that ATSC 3.0 outperforms 5G broadcast, because of well-designed bit interleaved coded modulation (BICM) and time interleaver that can mitigate deep signal fades. The capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operating expenses (OPEX) of the two systems are analyzed based on physical layer performances. The evaluations could be used for the planning of terrestrial broadcast services to mobile handheld devices.