We're sure that you could insert your favorite "speed of light" and "are you getting enough fiber in your diet" saying yourself, so we won't. But we will share with you the latest advances in fiber optic transport and routing, as more people look towards fiber as an alternative to copper.
Evertz Microsystems
www.evertz.com
By careful adoption of the available tools, you can multiplex many signals of different types onto a single fiber link, which can also be bi-directional.
Evertz offers plug-in modules which can be employed in systems linking two or more facilities with multiple video, audio, and data channels in both directions. Video can be analog or digital, SD or HD and audio can be analog, digital, or embedded. Standard telecommunications bit rates such as OC-3, and STM-4 are all supported, enabling a wide range of standard data bit rates to be used. Various multiplexing methods are employed including time division multiplexing (TDM), wave division multiplexing (WDM), coarse wave division multiplexing (CWDM), and dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM).
More advanced system use add/drop multiplexing, which supports the concept of "giving everything to everybody." This allows users to simply de-multiplex a required signal from a bouquet and to re-multiplex local contributory content to the bundle. It is always best to use single-mode fiber these days and the cost is no more than for multi-mode fiber.
In common with the telco companies, the Evertz system uses the standard SNMP protocol to monitor all channels, using the company's VistaLINK software. The standard package provides an instantaneous alarm if there is any mal function, together fault logging stamped with date and time of the error.
MULTIDYNE
www.multidyne.com
MULTIDYNE has developed patent-pending solutions for the transport and distribution of uncompressed video, audio, and data over fiber. Their new technology drastically simplifies the architecture of a fiber optic network, reduces equipment costs, simplifies design, and maintains uncompressed, digital, broadcast quality video from end to end.
In a traditional system, there are multiple fiber optic transmitters at each video source. The fiber optic signals are then typically routed to a central location or node. At the central location the fiber optic signals are converted back to analog video, audio, and data. Then up to eight channels of video, audio, and data are combined once again using time-division multiplexing (TDM) into a fiber optic signals. Two time-division multiplexers are required to transport 16 channels of video over one or two fibers. The equipment at the central node typically occupies 8-10 rack-units. The 16 channels of TDM video are then decoded at the receiving end using three or more rack-units of equipment.
The MULTIDYNE patent-pending fiber transport system reduces the equipment required at the central node from 8-10 rack-units to one or two. As in the transitional system, a fiber head is used at the source location to encode the video, audio, and data onto one fiber. At the central location or node the 16 fiber optic receivers and two TDMs are combined into one device call the fiber hub. The fiber hub supports up to 16 fiber optic inputs from up to 16 video fiber head units. The fiber hub unit has one high speed fiber optic output for the main fiber trunk.
The equipment complexity and size is also reduced at the destination point from 3-4 down to 1-2 rack-units. Signal quality is maintained by digitizing once as opposed to digitizing twice. The video, audio, and data signals are digitized once at the fiber head and then are decoded back to an analog signal at the fiber receiver hub.
Opticomm
www.opticomm.com
Fiber optic transmission has many advantages over other methods of transmission such as copper or wireless. For broadcast TV applications the most obvious benefits include high data rates and bandwidth over any distance, zero-delay in signal transmission, small cable size and weight, immunity to EMI, and future-proof no-new-cable upgrades. And today, optical transmission is as price-competitive as copper.
Opticomm recommends its digital products for both analog and digital source signals since a digital signal has no degradation over the entire transmission path. The FDV product line converts analog video and audio for digital transmission (10-bit for video and 24-bit for audio) over multi-mode (medium distance) and single-mode fiber (long distance). The FDV product is configurable at factory according to the application needs, such as number of video, audio and data channels (RS-232, RS-422 and RS-485), simplex or duplex, and optical wavelength.
Opticomm's DVX product line transmits one or four SDI video signals, both standard definition and high definition over a single fiber.
Both product lines can be ordered with CWDM optics to multiplex up to 16 FDV and DVX cards, enabling up to 256 video, audio, and data channels to be transmitted on one fiber. Both product lines come as enclosed insert cards that can fit an Opticomm sturdy stand-alone casing for throw down applications or that can be inserted in the Opticomm 19-inch rack with a single or two redundant power supplies.
Finally, Opticomm products are extremely reliable and are backed by a 10 year limited warranty and comprehensive customer support from a company with a 20 year track record in fiber optic communication.
PESA
www.pesa.com/images/PESA_XD.pdf
The PESA XD switcher is a next-generation photonic routing switcher powered by Brilliance, Glimmerglass' patented microphotonics technology. Housed in a standard 3 RU chassis, the XD routing system is a revolutionary platform that accepts any definition (HD-SDI, SDI, analog video, analog audio, AES/EBU, ASI/DVB, or any format up to 40Gbps) by switching light signals between input and output fibers without electrical conversion.
By simply integrating the XD into your current distribution system, you're guaranteed to be future-proofed for years to come. Many new and exciting formats are beginning to appear as a result of high definition digital distribution and PESA is gearing the XD system to address these demands. The XD supports bandwidths from 3Mbps up to 40Gbps.
By switching light directly without electrical conversion, the XD photonic routing switcher is cool and compact, supporting 64x64 fibers in 3 RU while consuming only 35 watts of power Integrated with PESA's 3500PRO control system, the XD photonic routing switcher is the ideal solution for flexible and cost-effective long distance video distribution (to 20 km) for any signal format.
Telecast Fiber Systems
www.telecast-fiber.com
With the growing need for HD and the high-bandwidth signals that produce it, fiber optic technologies are an increasingly important component of television broadcasting. While fiber's imperviousness to signal degradation over long distances provides obvious benefits in terms of reliability, it is the huge signal capacity of a fiber optic strand that makes producing events in HD a feasible option for many broadcasters. By allowing crews to send video, audio, and data signals down a single fiber cable instead of multiple bulky coaxial cable runs, we lower the overall effort and cost of production with faster setup and teardown, and more efficient use of crews and vehicles.
While some of today's HD broadcast cameras can be run on triax, they are severely distance limited. Once existing installed copper cables are replaced with fiber, the need to string a variety of single-purpose cables, like triax, coax, audio pairs, and CAT-5, or to use repeaters or amplifiers will be eliminated. That is why facilities and venues around the world are installing high capacity infrastructures based on fiber, not just for voice and data, but also for video and audio distribution and television broadcast production. Lightweight, portable, and flexible enough to handle a variety of formats, the fiber optic technologies we offer today make broadcasting a lot easier. It's as simple as that.
