Towercom Bulgaria Picks Thomson Broadcast Transmitters

Towercom Bulgaria has selected Thomson Broadcast as a strategic supplier in the rollout of a “Digital Video Broadcast-Terrestria” (DVB-T)-based “digital terrestrial television” (DTTV) network across Bulgaria.

Towercom Bulgaria’s deal includes the acquisition of new energy-efficient Thomson Broadcast Elite GreenPower transmitters for reduced energy usage and optimal reliability, the company says in a written statement.

Towercom Bulgaria was awarded a 15-year DVB-T license and is building two leading-edge single-frequency networks (SFN) for nationwide operation. To meet Towercom's requirements, Thomson Broadcast supplied Elite GreenPower medium- and high-power DVB-T transmitters in the range of 1 to 5 kilowatts (kW) root mean square (RMS). These efficient high-power transmitters allow Towercom Bulgaria to decrease energy consumption significantly while guaranteeing the best signal quality. With a power density reaching 9.6 kW RMS per 19-inch standard cabinet, the new Elite GreenPower series enables energy consumption savings of up to 15 percent over the previous Elite transmitter versions.

"We selected the Thomson Broadcast transmission solution for our project because it offers a good balance between cost of ownership and outstanding output power efficiency," said Lyudmil Christov, chief technical officer of Towercom Bulgaria. The modular design of the transmitters, with hot-swappable and pre-tuned modules, allows for further control of operational costs by reducing maintenance procedures.

A significant part of this project initially included the installation of nine medium- and nine high-power Elite GreenPower transmitters at various sites around the country, says Towercom Bulgaria, which ordered an additional six transmitters, thus increasing the number of Thomson transmitters in use at Towercom Bulgaria to 24. For perfect redundancy, each site is equipped with an n+1 configuration mode.

Towercom also benefits from the unique Elite digital adaptive pre-correction (DAP) standard feature for real-time linear and nonlinear corrections to compensate automatically for performance variances due to changes in environmental conditions, component aging, and reduction of output power.

"The DTTV rollout in Bulgaria marks the first major step in our deployment of the Elite GreenPower series in Eastern European countries," said Nicolas Dallery, president of Thomson Broadcast. "Meeting environmental concerns, the new Elite GreenPower series offers guaranteed performance while paving the way for environmentally friendly transmission networks." --Government Video