SOMEONE YOU SHOULD KNOW: Charles Lo, Qualcomm

Posted on November 1, 2018 in ATSC News

Charles Lo is Principal Engineer in Qualcomm’s industry standards organization. He chairs S33-1, the ATSC specialist group that’s responsible for designing the signaling, delivery and error-correction aspects of ATSC 3.0. For example, S33-1 is where the decision to adopt an all-IP delivery system was first discussed and agreed upon. He’s also involved with the S33, S34, S36, S38 and TG3-6 groups.

“It’s no doubt going to be huge – bringing much more modern and advanced physical layer technologies and broadcast capabilities than its ATSC 1.0 predecessor,” Lo says of the new broadcast standard.

Four Decades of Impact

Lo’s 38-year career started after graduating from Cornell University with a master’s degree in electrical engineering in 1979. His first stop after Ithaca was with AT&T Bell Labs in Holmdel, N.J., before moving on to work in applied research at Bellcore.

There, he worked for Steve Weinstein who invented orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) and focused on “a range of areas from fiber optics to microwave subcarrier delivery of video to home, and later on in PCS (Personal Communication Services).” In 1993, he moved to California to begin a career with PacTel Wireless which ultimately became AirTouch Communications.

Twenty years later, he joined Qualcomm and has been there ever since, working on wireless standards, with participation in a number of SDOs and industry groups for 3GPP2, OMA, FLO Forum, 3GPP, IEEE, Connected Car Consortium, and of course ATSC.

Active in ATSC

Lo’s work with ATSC started in 2010 because of related activities in Qualcomm as well as previous participation in Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) BCAST. In his role as S33-1 Chair, he’s driving various rounds of technology group ballots for ongoing improvements.

“The A/331 specification is a complex one dealing with the IP-based service transport and service signaling and involves other important functionality such as application layer FEC (forward error correction) and synchronization between broadcast and broadband delivery,” he says. “Getting the specification correct and clear is no small undertaking and requires a number of iterations which are under way.”

Sweet and Sounds

Charles and his wife, Christine, have a daughter, Jacqueline, who recently graduated from UCLA and works in the software field in the San Francisco Bay area and a son, Derrick, who is a senior at USC majoring in Public Health. Christine is an avid hummingbird rehabilitator and subject area expert.

When he is not helping move Next Gen TV forward, Charles loves to mountain and road bike, hike and enjoys listening to and playing classical and jazz music.

“I learned violin at age 7 and played in a number of community and college orchestras,” he says. He’s also fond of baking of cakes and breads.

Posted in ATSC News