LS Telcom Signs First ATSC 3.0 Customer

LS Telcom said today that Cavell Mertz & Associates has purchased the CHIRplus_BC Broadcast Planning Tool. Cavell Mertz & Associates is an engineering consulting firm specializing in the broadcast and wireless communications industries.

The product supports both the next-generation ATSC 3.0 as well as the current ATSC 1.0 standards.

From large scale Single Frequency Networks (SFN) to predictive interference models factoring in LTE network buildouts, CHIRplus_BC offers “a comprehensive set of capabilities designed to maximize next generation of over the air network deployments,” according to LS Telcom.

“With the implementation of ATSC 3.0 now on the horizon and the expected growth in the use of SFN systems, the need for a robust RF planning and evaluation tool became evident. The LS Telcom CHIRplus_BC toolset comfortably answered that need for us,” said Gary Cavell, president of Cavell Mertz & Associates. “We look forward to helping broadcasters explore their options with this new technology.” 

“Technologies and toolsets that increase the efficiency and accuracy are required to keep pace with the changes in the broadcast industry,” said Casey Joseph, LS Telcom VP of sales and business development. “With the CHIRplus_BC toolset, Cavell Mertz can now benefit from the efficiency and scale of next generation planning capability, maximizing the next generation of broadcast technology.”

CHIRplus_BC includes integrated support for the requisite FCC database information, integrated maps, population coverage, and a comprehensive list of supported propagation algorithms including OET-69 Longley-Rice. It also features a compliant planning capability with configuration options that allow network engineers to plan for the current ATSC 1.0 standard as well as maximize the operation of the ATSC 3.0 standard to deliver the highest throughput possible, the company says.

Additionally, to further improve the accuracy of the projected coverage mapping, the CHIRplus_BC toolset supports the incorporation of custom antenna broadcast patterns captured by Colibrex UAS (unmanned aircraft system) based measurements. This custom input collected from the installed antenna array delivers “the most accurate antenna input for the broadcast propagation analysis,” the company says.