The reelection of “Lula” may be getting global news coverage, but when it comes to big news out of Brazil for the broadcast television industry, it is ATSC 3.0 that is what’s all abuzz. How so? The group led by President Madeleine Noland is cheering “significant progress in next-generation broadcast technology” seen in the South American nation following successful laboratory validation and a live demonstration of “innovative” interference cancellation and signal reception capabilities.
The results reported from ATSC’s Implementation Team 5 – Tower Network (IT-5), the broadcast standards association pushing the full U.S. embrace of the technology that powers NEXTGEN TV, says, “underscore the continuing evolution of ATSC 3.0 and its potential to support more efficient, flexible and robust broadcast services.”
The demonstration at the 2026 IEEE International Symposium on Broadband Multimedia Systems and Broadcasting (BMSB) in João Pessoa, Brazil, held July 8–10, was conducted by Mackenzie Presbyterian University. It showed the system integration and laboratory verification using hardware, software, and algorithms developed or contributed by IT-5 members from the University of the Basque Country (Spain), Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China), the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (South Korea), and London, Ont.-based Western University.
“Researchers successfully demonstrated real-time decoding of a lower-power broadcast signal while cancelling a significantly stronger signal operating on the same frequency,” the ATSC cheers while explaining why this is important. “As broadcasters worldwide explore ways to maximize spectrum efficiency, expand coverage and introduce new services, the ability to manage interference between signals sharing the same frequency represents an important technological advancement.”
The demonstration employed an Inter-Tower Communication Network (ITCN) and Geographically Segmented Localcasting (GSL) to improve spectrum efficiency by allowing signals from local stations to overlap geographically. It also demonstrated how advanced signal processing techniques can facilitate the reception and decoding of lower-power signals in challenging co-channel interference environments.
In the demonstrated configuration, the desired signal was received at a power level 37 decibels below the stronger signal. Successful decoding under these conditions provides encouraging evidence of the potential for advanced interference cancellation techniques to support more flexible broadcast network architectures.
These capabilities could ultimately help broadcasters improve spectrum utilization, support localized content delivery and explore new network configurations as ATSC 3.0 deployments evolve.
“This demonstration is an important example of how ATSC 3.0 continues to evolve beyond traditional television broadcasting,” said Noland. “The ability to manage complex signal environments and make more efficient use of spectrum opens exciting possibilities for broadcasters. It also reinforces the value of international collaboration in moving promising technologies from the laboratory toward practical implementation.”
The Brazilian developments come as the IEEE Broadcast Technology Forum is held Tuesday and Wednesday (10/27-28) at the NAB’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.
