Abstract: A light tower includes a base, an extendible mast coupled to the base, a battery pack supported on the base and including a plurality of lithium-ion battery cells, a light assembly including a plurality of light emitting diodes electrically coupled to the battery pack, a display configured to receive inputs and display information, and a controller in communication with the battery pack, the light assembly, and the display. The configured being to: receive a light intensity change input from the display, change a power provided by the battery pack to the light emitting diodes in response to the light intensity change input, and display on the display a change in runtime resulting from the change of the power provided by the battery pack to the light emitting diodes.

Abstract: A hybrid light tower includes an engine, a permanent magnet generator configured to be driven by the engine, a battery pack including a plurality of lithium-ion battery cells, an extendible mast configured to move between a lowered position and a raised position, and a light assembly including a plurality of light emitting diodes. The generator is configured to produce a first DC power. The battery pack is directly electrically coupled to the generator to receive the first DC power from the generator to charge the battery pack. The light assembly is coupled to the mast and the light emitting diodes electrically coupled to the battery pack to receive a second DC power from the battery pack. The light tower does not include a battery charger connected to the battery pack.

Abstract: An encoding system is configured to allow data to be transmitted at one of two selectable bit-error-rate quality factors. The first bit-error-rate quality factor selection corresponds to the conventional ATSC FEC encoding systems, and the second bit-error-rate quality factor selection provides an ATSC-like FEC encoding scheme that substantially improves the bit-error-rate. The first quality factor selection effects a 2/3 trellis encoding, whereas the higher quality factor selection effects a 1/3 trellis encoding. Because the high-quality trellis encoding rate of 1/3 is half the lower-quality trellis encoding rate of 2/3, the data rate of this high-quality encoded bit-stream is half that of the conventional lower-quality encoded bit-stream. The 1/3 trellis encoding is effected using an ATSC-compatible encoding and a modified symbol mapping. The encoding scheme provides 2:1 data redundancy and the symbol mapping provides a maximum distance for the redundant encoding.

Abstract: An encoding system is configured to allow data to be transmitted at one of two selectable bit-error-rate quality factors. The first bit-error-rate quality factor selection corresponds to the conventional ATSC FEC encoding systems, and the second bit-error-rate quality factor selection provides an ATSC-like FEC encoding scheme that substantially improves the bit-error-rate. The first quality factor selection effects a 2/3 trellis encoding, whereas the higher quality factor selection effects a 1/3 trellis encoding. Because the high-quality trellis encoding rate of 1/3 is half the lower-quality trellis encoding rate of 2/3, the data rate of this high-quality encoded bit-stream is half that of the conventional lower-quality encoded bit-stream. The 1/3 trellis encoding is effected using an ATSC-compatible encoding and a modified symbol mapping. The encoding scheme provides 2:1 data redundancy and the symbol mapping provides a maximum distance for the redundant encoding.

Abstract: An encoding system is configured to allow data to be transmitted at one of two selectable bit-error-rate quality factors. The first bit-error-rate quality factor selection corresponds to the conventional ATSC FEC encoding systems, and the second bit-error-rate quality factor selection provides an ATSC-like FEC encoding scheme that substantially improves the bit-error-rate. The first quality factor selection effects a ⅔ trellis encoding, whereas the higher quality factor selection effects a ⅓ trellis encoding. Because the high-quality trellis encoding rate of ⅓ is half the lower-quality trellis encoding rate of ⅔, the data rate of this high-quality encoded bit-stream is half that of the conventional lower-quality encoded bit-stream. The ⅓ trellis encoding is effected using an ATSC-compatible encoding and a modified symbol mapping. The encoding scheme provides 2:1 data redundancy and the symbol mapping provides a maximum distance for the redundant encoding.