Sinclair and IIT Bombay sign MoU to develop wireless broadcast technology

New Delhi: Sinclair, Inc. and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for collaboration of technology and standards development in wireless broadcast services over next-generation telecom and broadcast networks. 

Research efforts will focus on enhancements to the international ATSC 3.0 wireless broadcast standard for a variety of mobile, television and other fixed applications that can benefit India and the world. 

New capabilities of ATSC 3.0 will advance Broadcast-to-Everything (B2X) use cases to provide dynamic traffic management and fast interworking with 5G networks, efficient spectrum utilisation, low-latency datacasting, edge content distribution and improved battery life for smartphones, feature phones, wearables and IoT devices. 

IIT Bombay will also contribute directly to the B2X release standardisation work underway as a member of ATSC. 

India has over 1 billion mobile subscribers, almost 250 million TV households, high per capita mobile data consumption and the proliferation of live news, sports and popular linear TV and radio channels. B2X will help relieve network congestion, provide a high-quality service for concurrent and popular content, and promote sustainability. B2X further improves upon Direct-to-Mobile (D2M), extending broadcast into the IMT-2030 (6G) ecosystem. 

In the long term, B2X will drive progress in emergency and disaster management, remote education and skilling, advanced agricultural techniques, service resilience, augmentation of satellite positioning and timing, vehicular communications and open AI-based applications for broadcasting and datacasting. 

Professor Shireesh Kedare, Director of IIT Bombay, said, “We are excited to partner with Sinclair in wireless telecom transformation and promote academic excellence, joint projects, and joint intellectual property development, including Make in India initiatives to drive B2X adoption in India. It touches IIT Bombay’s mission to address the needs of society and country at large and develop technologies and products that improve the quality of life for both urban and rural population.” 

Chris Ripley, President and CEO, Sinclair, Inc., said, “We consider the collaboration work with IIT Bombay to be of the utmost importance in establishing ATSC 3.0-based B2X as the preferred technology for broadcasting and multicasting for diverse applications, not just in India but ultimately across the globe. Sinclair is proud to have IIT Bombay reinforce our foundational role in advancing next-generation broadcast.”  

Mark Aitken, Senior Vice-President, Sinclair, Inc. and the guiding architect of the ATSC 3.0 standard, said “ATSC 3.0’s high bandwidth efficiency and time and frequency interleaving features make it undisputedly the best mobile broadcast standard. ATSC 3.0 also stands alone with its bootstrap “blanking” feature that facilitates the introduction of B2X release enhancements without disrupting the operation of earlier releases.” 

Madeleine Noland, President of ATSC, said, “Telecom networks focus on unicast (one-to-one) communications, while B2X adds ATSC 3.0’s high-performance broadcast (one-to-many) distribution aligned with mobile specifications. ATSC applauds Sinclair’s and IIT Bombay’s participation in B2X standards and technology development, which has the potential to revolutionise data distribution efficiency across multiple networks. IIT Bombay joins other world-class academic and research institutions as ATSC’s newest member.” 

Shashi Shekhar Vempati, former CEO Prasar Bharati, IIT Bombay alumnus, and member of the ATSC Business Advisory Council, said, “The recent decision by Brazil to adopt the ATSC 3.0 standard for broadcast services, based on extensive testing of multiple systems, paves the way for B2X to further advance the standard’s broadcast resilience for the greater public good. This collaboration furthers the developmental goals of a Viksit Bharat (Developed Bharat) as envisioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.”