The SCTE Benelux Lecture Meeting, 2003.

The Society's Benelux Section Lecture Meeting The Society's Benelux section held its first Lecture Meeting on 16th September. Some of the lecture slides are now available. See SCTE President, Dr. Roger Blakeway's report for details.

	Another First for the SCTE. The first lecture meeting to be organised by the newly formed Benelux SCTE was held on September 16th at the RAI Exhibition and Conference Centre, Amsterdam. The meeting was held in conjunction with IBC who provided the facilities as part of the ongoing partnership with the SCTE and as an added value event for attendees of the IBC Exhibition. The event was attended by 85 people who enjoyed a half day programme of lectures on the theme 'General Developments in Technology for Networks, Equipment & Services'. The meeting was introduced by Rien Baan, the SCTE Benelux Secretary and chaired by Aart Verbree who is the pro-tem Chairman of SCTE Benelux. Aart took the opportunity to address the meeting in Dutch to explain the nature and organisation of the newly formed group and introducing the third member of the Committee, Herman Grooten.

'The Development of a Hardened CMTS' Presented by Mrs E Emurat, CEO of Daphne a Belgian Company. Mrs Emurat's paper dealt with the problems of heat generation and dispersal when a CMTS is housed in a street cabinet. The use of thermal modelling, heat probes and thermal imaging were all used to ensure that at component, board and case level temperatures were controlled and the operating range of the heat sensitive components e.g. cpu, memory, were not exceeded.

	'Application of MiniPOPs' Presented by Bernd Overbeck of Narad Networks Inc. Right click to download the presentation slides. Mr Overbeck dealt with architectures for deploying such hardened CMTS in the field where space and network topology made traditional hub based CMTS deployment a problem. Solutions include the use of 'diplexing bypass' equipment at normal amplifier stations to provide high bandwidth in forward and reverse path.

'Development of Digital Headends' presented by Steven Luys of Scientific Atlanta . Mr Luys noted that space requirements were growing, especially with the advent of DOCSIS and VOD. Discussing the concepts of distributed headends he emphasised the success they were having with the ultimate 'edge network server' namely a PVR in the STB. One-off play facilities and security at the digital level had satisfied the Content Providers from an anti-piracy viewpoint.

	'Etth: The Next Generation Data Over Cable' Presented by Reinaart Bryssink, VP Business Development at Teleste and Jan Ariesen of Tratec. Right click to download part 1 of the presentation slides. Right click to download part 2 of the presentation slides. Reinaart dealt with the need for higher bandwidths over the next 10 years and proposed an architecture for delivering wideband Ethernet to the local node where it was switched and carried on the final coaxial drop to the home. Martien described the balun based diplexer that they had developed to enable baseband 10BaseT to co-exist on the final drop with normal TV signals despite the enormous difference in signal levels. (A further report on this paper is included in the report of the 2003 SCTE Autumn Lecture.)

A Chance to Network. The morning concluded with a Buffet lunch, provided by the Society, which was much appreciated by those attending. Both the lectures and the opportunity to talk with colleagues old and new proved a valuable opportunity and combining the event with a visit to IBC was very popular. The meeting was successful in bringing several membership applications including those being transferred from a previous Dutch organisation VDCAI.

	The SCTE is delighted with the success of the first lecture meeting organised by the Benelux committee. If you would like more information on how to join the Benelux section please email the SCTE office


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