Limitations of ATSSS Technology in ATSC 3.0 ? 5G Convergent Systems

This paper explores the use of the 3GPP technology Access Traffic Steering, Switching and Splitting (ATSSS) to enable IP layer convergence between 5G and ATSC 3.0. ATSSS was first introduced in Release 16 and originally devised to integrate non-3GPP access networks such as WiFi and wireline into the 5G System; and is flexible enough to include IP-based broadcast standards like ATSC 3.0. The limitations of the ATSSS technology to enable this convergence are detailed in this paper. A proposal to overcome them with a high-level converged architecture between ATSC 3.0 and 5G, featuring ATSSS Release 17 characteristics, is additionally described.