The SCTE Spring Lecture Meeting, 2006.

	Getting it Together The SCTE held its 2007 Spring Lecture Meeting on Tuesday 3rd April at the IEE in Savoy Place, London. SCTE lecture meetings are all day events beginning at around 0930 and ending in time for the 1700 cocktail party where attendees get the chance to discuss the day, and the industry, in an informal atmosphere.


Members Only. Members of the SCTE can follow this link to download the presentation slides for any or all of the presentations.


Welcome and Introduction Five speakers provided a day full of thought-provoking material with the theme “Getting it Together”. The speakers were introduced by Janhein van Brienen, the papers secretary, through whose efforts the day’s proceedings were possible.		Jan van Brienen

Steve Gribby, Technetix Plc	The uses of Switchable Taps Steve Gribby, Technetix Plc The first presentation was by Steve Gribby of Technetix Plc, who delivered a very interesting and practical exposition on the uses of Switchable Taps. Steve joined the SCTE in 2000 being a Microsoft certified professional and gained an HNC in engineering at Mansfield Polytechnic College. In 2004 joined Tratec UK in the post of UK and Ireland Sales Manager. Following the merger with Technetix Steve became their Technical Solutions specialist. Switchable taps are a powerful tool in tracking down sources of interference and noise in the return path, and in the remote disconnection of a subscriber. Ingress detection and elimination opens the door to an improved quality of service, and the knock-on effect of this is to reduce the churn rate and attract new customers. The taps are individually addressable from the head-end under the control of the network billing system. The direct result of this chain of command is that customers in subscription arrears are switched off. The taps are usually arranged in modules of eight and have adjustable attenuators to assist line conditioning. The “ingress safe” innovation has also been introduced into return path combiners to reduce ingress interference through the adding of a 180-degree phase shift to one input port of a 2-way unit.

Screening Effectiveness in Communication Cable Bernhard Mund from Bedea, presented a paper on the measurement of screening effectiveness in communication cables. Bernhard was born in 1953 in Marburg, Germany. On gaining his Dipl-Ing degree for Communication and Microprocessor Techonologies from FH Griessen-Friedberg in 1984 he joined Bedea Berkenhoff & Drebes GmbH and is R&D Manager responsible for the design and development of communication cables and for the RF and EMC laboratories. He also serves as secretary of CENELEC SC 46XA – co-axial cables and of IEC SC46A – co-axial cables and is a member of IEC TC46/WG5, working on screening effective ness. Bernhard spoke of the screening effectiveness of cables and methods of measurement. For frequencies below 5MHz the Transfer Impedance follows Ohm’s Law, the units being in milli-ohms per metre. Above 5MHz the screening attenuation is important and is measured in the “Tri-Axial” system. The cable under test is prepared with very high quality connectors and terminated with its characteristic impedance comprising a purely resistive load. A sweep generator and tracking receiver complete the test gear. The test rig can also be used to measure the quality of connectors, and a new test version can assess taps and splitters – for which CENELEC is preparing a new standard. Measurements in the range 100KHz to 8GHz can be performed.		Bernhard Mund, Bedea

Eberhard Gauge, CLC/TC209 Secretariat	Standardisation Activities in the Field of Cable Networks Eberhard Gauger, CLC/TC209 Secretariat The afternoon session began with an interesting talk on Standardisation Activities in the Field of Cable Networks given by Eberhard Gauger from the CLC/TC209 Secretariat. Eberhard graduated in communications engineering at the University of Stuttgart in 1972, and since early 2004 has worked as an independent consultant for “Multimedia Communication”. His main focus iis on standardisation, certification, professional articles and translations. He is also actively engaged on National, European and International Standardisation with the principal effort on Cable Networks for Television signals and sound signals in interactive services. He is Secretary of CENELEC TC 209 and convenor of IEC TC100/TA5 maintenance tear MT60728-11 (Safety). Eberhard outlined the work being done on standards for Cable Networks defining maximum and minimum signal levels, maximum allowed signal levels, isolation between ports, amplifier response and group delay, resulting in a new document relating to system performance. In the field of safety much work was progressing on Lightning Protection with moves to clear up ambiguities, defining standards for antenna mast earths and for equipotential bonding. A standard EN60728-6 for optical networks is evolving, laying down guidelines for analogue optical systems. More work is proceeding on return path performance with some new implementation guidelines.

The Tools and Benefits of OSS/Business Support Systems Robert Cruikshank, C-Co The fourth speaker of the day was Robert Cruikshank of C-Cor. Robert joined C-Cor in 2004 following a varied and brilliant career in cable communications, and has both Bachelor and Master of Science Degrees, with honours, in Mechanical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His subject was “The Tools and Benefits of OSS/Business Support Systems”. With most cable networks at or near their limits of capacity, and with 256-QAM signals currently providing the maximum degree of spectral efficiency, network operators are having to look to up-grading their systems. This situation is brought about by the consumer demand for more channels and services, the imminence of full HDTV services and the requirement for more bandwidth to accommodate faster Internet speeds. Networks require upgrading in terms of performance, the bonus accruing from this being a reduced churn rate and greater customer satisfaction. In addition to improving network technical quality, the reduction or removal of analogue TV signals from a network will make room for transmissions of more high-quality modulation formats that could, eventually embrace the implementation of 1024-QAM.		Robert Cruikshank, C-Co

David Keeley, CTO, Motorola	Converged Networks and Next Generation Services David Keeley, CTO, Motorola Last speaker of the day was David Keeley of Motorola. His presentation was on “Converged Networks and Next Generation Services". David is CTO of Motorola’s Connected Home Solutions division, His career in broadband communications spans 33 years and he is currently an elected board member of the European Anti-Piracy Organisation, and a member of the technical standards committees of CENELEC, IEEE and the British Standards Institute. David’s presentation gave us a fascinating foretaste of the future of broadband communications. Along with other companies in the field chasing after the same customers, the common objective is to make life simpler for the customer on a broadband network, to reduce confusion. With networks going increasingly to IP, the home network is given the title of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and is moving away from triple-play to quadruple play that adds mobile services. The concept of “Femtocells” arises, a 3G base station in your home. The onward integration of services is now termed ‘next-play’ and means that all services are available everywhere at any time on any device. This requires seamless mobility, the provision of simple-to-use, good-value services in the face of increasing complexity. Interoperability problems have to be tackled, media convergence first and then voice convergence.

Note for Non-Members This page would normally be part of the Members' Area of the SCTE site. In order to give the widest possible circulation to the information about this important meeting, special arrangements have been made to make this page available to all. Please note that non-members who click the menu links to the left may find they are asked to sign in and will, therefore, be unable to view these pages. To find out how you can view all of this site please visit the Non-members Area.		Lunch provides the chance to chat

Members Only. Members of the SCTE can follow this link to download the presentation for any or all of the presentations.



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