ATSC Core Network: Encryption Analysis and Evaluation

The ever-increasing consumer demand for new applications and use cases has revolutionized standards for delivering multimedia content. Regarding broadcast standards, ATSC is leading the way in technological development and has positioned itself at the forefront of the industry. In particular, ATSC 3.0 is the first IP-based broadcast standard, which enables the integration of a Broadcast Core Network (BCN) into the traditional architecture to coordinate the transmission facilities. It also facilitates implementing futuristic use cases that were inconceivable a few years ago. However, the development of the BCN also poses new technological challenges regarding data and information management and security. This paper aims to analyze the possible alternatives of the BCN for providing cybersecurity through data encryption. It presents an analysis of current alternatives and a prototype based on a client-server architecture that implements encryption techniques in the BCN. The results show that depending on the cybersecurity level to be guaranteed, different costs in terms of processing time have to be assumed. In addition, a set of guidelines for guaranteeing cybersecurity in the BCN is defined.