5G New Radio for Terrestrial Broadcast: A Forward-Looking Approach for NR-MBMS

3GPP LTE eMBMS Release 14, also referred to as FeMBMS (Further evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service) or EnTV (Enhanced TV), is the first mobile broadband technology standard to incorporate a transmission mode designed to deliver Terrestrial Broadcast services from conventional High Power High Tower (HPHT) broadcast infrastructure. With respect to the physical layer, the main improvements in FeMBMS are the support of larger inter-site distance for Single Frequency Networks (SFN) and the ability to allocate 100% of a carrier’s resources to the broadcast payload, with self-contained signaling in the downlink. From the system architecture perspective, a receive-only mode enables free-to-air (FTA) reception with no need for an uplink or SIM card, thus receiving content without UE registration with a network. These functionalities are only available in the LTE Advanced Pro specifications as 5G New Radio (NR), standardized in 3GPP from Release 15, has so far focused entirely on unicast. This paper outlines a physical layer design for NR-MBMS, a system derived, with minor modifications, from the 5G-NR specifications, and suitable for the transmission of linear TV and radio services in either single-cell or SFN operation. The paper evaluates the NR-MBMS proposition and compares it to LTE-based FeMBMS in terms of flexibility, performance, capacity and coverage.