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StatusOngoing
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Status date2009-04-06
The objective of the the SatFlow Concept Demonstration project is to help Newtec prepare the development of a new product line which will be called SatFlow and which will offer operational benefits to terrestrial broadcasting tower operators for broadcasting digital television to both classical fixed television receivers and to mobile handheld terminals.
The project entails two on-site demonstrations in cooperation with prospective clients. The purpose of the demonstrations is to gather customer requirements and showcase the effectiveness of the SatFlow features. The output of the project will be the draft of the new SatFlow product technical definition and the elaboration of the SatFlow business case.
The key evaluation issues are:
- Performance of the new features offered by SatFlow;
- Savings in capital and operational expenses of tower operators and content distributors;
- Customer appraisal.
Main benefits offered by the SatFlow demonstration include:
- Increased efficiency of television content distribution;
- Operational cost savings offered by the tower control network.
SatFlow will be a new System Product Line. This means that it will offer a complete solution to the customer including Hub, Remote Terminals and the Air Interface, as defined by Newtec. Newtec will also take up the system’s customer support responsibility, which implies real-time debugging of the Hub and remote terminals by Newtec’s customer support centre.
The SatFlow demonstration comprises the following two elements:
- An efficient distribution system to supply DVB-T or DVB-H transmission towers with the proper content;
- A tower control network, enabling the monitoring and configuration of Newtec’s or other manufacturers’ equipment at the towers.
Newtec’s intention to create a new SatFlow product line is based on the opinion that the proposed SatFlow concept has a real potential to offer operational improvement and added value to the existing and future terrestrial and mobile digital TV broadcast systems.
The project plan is driven by 3 major milestones:
- Demonstration and site-acceptance in Betzdorf, Luxembourg (July 08),
- Demonstration and site-acceptance in Algiers, Algeria (October 08),
- Final product definition and design of the SatFlow system (March 09).
In the run-up towards the demonstrations, the SatFlow concepts will be developed, tested and adapted to the customer’s needs. The experiences gathered during the demonstrations will allow to assess the customers’ requirements and to prepare the product definition and design of the SatFlow system.
The study project has ended. During the project, several product prototypes were developed and demonstrated multi-stream transmission, compression and encryption. In addition, a tower monitoring system (SatReach) has been developed and demonstrated.
These functionalities result in large operational savings for broadcast tower operators.