Design and Performance Analysis of an ATSC 3.0 Model in NS-3

ATSC 3.0 has been conceived and defined as the first IP-based digital terrestrial television standard. The viewers will have access to more advanced and immersive experiences, while the broadcasters will have a new way to interact with the audience. What is more, this unique feature also paves the path to the definition of a real convergent architecture with other broadband IP networks and the specification of new cooperative and inter-working use cases. Nevertheless, this new approach demands a thorough evaluation of the ATSC 3.0 features, not only as a point-to-multipoint (PTM) tool for media delivery, but also as an interactive player within the Internet framework. So far, there is not a tool to accomplish adequately the evaluation of ATSC 3.0 performance from a data network perspective. This work aims at filling this gap, and consequently, presents an ATSC 3.0 model that can be integrated in NS-3, a widely employed and validated discrete-event network simulator for internet systems. This tool can test the capability of ATSC 3.0 to offer new services in this interconnected heterogeneous scenarios. In the first part of the work, the paper presents the different layers that are part of this software module and how they are connected to the different parts of the network stack. Eventually, in the second part, the model is evaluated for two different scenarios and the most important parameters are studied and discussed.