MIMO Integration for Wireless Backhaul and Inter-Tower Communications in ATSC 3.0

Wireless backhaul and inter-tower communications networks were previously proposed as key enabling technologies for the next generation digital broadcasting systems, e.g. the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) 3.0 system. Due to the backward compatibility constraint, conventional symmetrical multi-input multi-output (MIMO) techniques cannot be applied directly in the existing broadcast infrastructure. In this paper, we propose a non-symmetrical approach to integrate MIMO in wireless backhaul and inter-tower communications networks. The proposed schemes maintain the existing broadcast infrastructure, while only adding a low-power RF feeding cable and one or more highly directional antennas to achieve low-cost MIMO implementation for high throughput data distribution and inter-tower networking for the next generation broadcasting systems. The advantages of the proposed system are low deployment cost and full backward compatibility with the ATSC 3.0 broadcast services.