IEEE Broadcast Technical Symposium Announcement

As I've said many times in my TV Technology column, the IEEE Broadcast Technology Symposium is one of the best conferences for learning about the latest developments in broadcast RF technology. The 53rd Annual Broadcast Symposium will be held at the Hotel Washington in Washington D.C October 15 through 17. A glance at the Preliminary Technical Program for this year's symposium shows several interesting papers. Wednesday afternoon's session focuses on single frequency networks and distributed transmission techniques for DTV. Included among the papers is a report on the results of tests of the distributed transmission system installed at WPSX-DT in Clearfield, PA and a paper by William Meintel on the effects of distributed transmission systems on service and interference analysis.

A paper scheduled for Friday afternoon may be one of the most controversial. Oded Bendov, John FX Browne, Charles Rhodes, and Yiyan Wu will develop "planning factors for real-world reception in the presence of sky and man-made noises. The present approach to calculating the field strength from the total receive power by imputing a non-existent carrier frequency will be analyzed, corrected and the limits to the validity of the calculation clarified." The abstract for the paper begins, "The present DTTV link budget and Longley-Rice service prediction algorithm, both based on idealized assumptions, have resulted in underestimation of the minimum power required for robust service, in exaggerated prediction of service for a given power and in overlooking the importance of receiver front-end design."

More information, including on-line registration, is available at www.ieee.org/organizations/society/bt/symposium.html.