Auton has conducted extensive field testing of its technology, including Portland, OR in March 2021 with WatchTV’s KORS-CD and Detroit in March 2022 with Scripps’ WMYD.

Performance was monitored and data collected over hundreds of miles of varied terrain including hilly areas, downtown corridors (including tunnels), and distances out to 60 miles from the tower. Monitored data and metrics included received signal level, S/N, post-PHY FEC errors, video streaming quality and vehicle speed.

Auton Industry Firsts:

Mobile testing with 2-layer FEC. Auton was the first to test application or packet-based forward error correction (FEC) together with ATSC 3.0 in the mobile environment. In addition to the robust ATSC 3.0 physical layer FEC, the al-FEC provides an additional layer of protection by processing and repairing at the IP packet level. This was demonstrated to improve performance in areas with coverage gaps due to hilly terrain.

Remoting of a complete ATSC 3.0 “stack”. Hosted by a Seattle data center, the Auton stack streamed a tunneled STLTP over the internet directly to the transmitter at KORS-CD in Portland, OR. This solution demonstrated the efficiency of a centralized broadcast chain and distribution of the broadcast stream (STLTP) across the internet to multiple transmitter sites.

Detroit March 2022: Pearl TV’s “Test Track” and WMYD. Auton tested the system over several days and hundreds of miles including downtown Detroit and the Highway 10 tunnel, 17 miles from the tower, where the streaming was glitch-free without the aid of repeaters.

Pictured here is the Auton prototype TCU and one of our test vehicles equipped with a 500 MHz dipole antenna.