Planning laboratory tests and field trials for evaluating ATSC DTV on SFN networks in Mexico City

In the year 2004, Mexico adopted the standard of digital television ATSC A/53. In 2012 it projected to end the analog broadcasting in the end of year 2015. Presently our country is in that transition process and studying the possibility to implement SFN networks (Single Frequency Networks) for the ATSC Digital Television standard. Some options that are recommended to implement ATSC SFN networks are: Distributed Transmitters (DTxTs) and Digital On-Channel Repeaters (DOCRs). It is also recommended that the ATSC receivers have a robust equalizer able to recover the signal over long and strong echoes, and improve the design of receiving antennas. In this paper, we propose a planning of laboratory tests and field trials for ATSC operating in SFN in Mexico City, whose main objective is to evaluate the performance parameters for good reception in some of the existing commercial ATSC receivers in Mexico and, based on results, make recommendations for the optimal operating parameters of ATSC SFN networks.