Overcoming Obstacles to Design a Robust Single Frequency Network in San Francisco

(Paper available in the Proceedings of the 2020 BEIT Conference)

Designing an ATSC-3 single frequency network (SFN) in the San Francisco market is challenging on many levels. The San Francisco market has anomalous terrain, limited options for transmitter sites due to hillside scenic regulations, and an onerous permitting process, all of which significantly impede system design. In addition, adjacent DMA markets have first adjacent channel facilities with protected contours encroaching well within the San Francisco DMA and city boundary, plus in-market adjacent channels pose a challenge for 3.0 SFN designs. In a post-repack environment, there will be sixteen full power stations – five VHF, and eleven UHF.

This paper will present the various obstacles encountered, and the solutions we’ve created to overcome those obstacles to create a robust, FCC-compliant SFN design. We will describe the process we’ve undertaken to design ATSC-3 SFNs on both UHF and VHF and how we arrived at the proposed SFN designs. Finally, we will discuss the futility of SFN design without proper propagation software deployment.

This session will be rebroadcast on the BEIT Express channel on May 13, 2020 at 9:45 p.m. and May 14, 2020 at 5:45 a.m. EDT (UTC -4).