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Customer Testimony |
Customer Testimony The CSA uses ICS Telecom to migrate to Terrestrial Digital Television |
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| Customer Testimony |
The French Broadcasting
Authority uses ICS Telecom
to migrate to Terrestrial Digital Television
By the end of 2002, the CSA should issue broadcasting authorisations to the operators chosen for the future terrestrial digital television network. ICS Telecom has been used for the simulation of the transmitters coverage and for interference analysis.
The Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA) - the French Broadcasting Authority - was created in 1989. The mission of this independent administrative authority is to uphold freedom of audiovisual communication in France. Composed of a college of nine members, its responsibilities cover many fields linked to audiovisual communication and particularly concern the management of transmission frequencies. The CSA thus takes parts in international coordination procedures relating to the allocation of television channels and radio frequencies and ensures that the claims of users experiencing problems in the quality of reception of radio or television programmes are taken into account.
On the 24th of July 2001, the CSA launched its first invitation for applications with a view to creating national digital television services broadcast via a terrestrial network (TDT).
This network should begin operating in France at the end of 2002, with the objective of eventually covering 85% of the French population.
This technology will enable the reception of more than thirty general viewing or thematic channels, free or pay-per-view, with a remarkable level of quality which will bring it directly into competition with cable or satellite TV.
Although many existing sites on which analogue TV transmitters and relays are currently located could be re-used for the TDT digital network, the task still remains of choosing additional sites and also optimising the allocation of radio frequencies to the new operators and precisely determining the coverage areas of each site in order to identify the size of the population concerned.
As the existing UHF (Ultra High Frequency) band is particularly congested, the CSA has used ICS Telecom, the leading software in the ATDI product range, to help it to study the problem of deploying new transmitters on this frequency band.
A tool with very extensive functions
Frequency allocation, analysis of the reflection, diffraction and propagation of radio waves, interference calcu-lation, analysis of interactions between terrestrial and satellite networks… these are all ICS Telecom functions, some of which are used by CSA engineers to supply coverage indications to future operators.
As Sami Lazar, a frequency engineer in the CSA Television Radio Broadcasting department, explains : "ICS Telecom perfectly meets the needs for which we use it: coverage studies, population calculations and targeted assistance in network planning to evaluate the risks of analogue-to-digital or digital-to-digital interference".
The technical department of the CSA has therefore trained three technicians in the use of ICS Telecom. To date, it has been possible to evaluate around sixty geographical sites out of a total of one hundred and ten sites chosen for the first phase of installation of the network. For each site, the CSA has a series of parameters (height, antenna diagram, maximum radiation gauges, etc.) which can be communicated to the various technical distributors chosen by the operators.
Two reservations have been expressed concerning ICS Telecom: «the absence of on-line help for one thing, but also the need to resort to an external module to concatenate the 50 x 50 km «slabs» which we use in the coverage calculations» comments Walid Sami, head of the CSA Television Radio Broadcasting department.
«Very often, in fact, the coverage area straddles two or more slabs of terrain. Nevertheless, these are minor defects and we are very satisfied with the product and particularly the excellent technical support and assistance offered by ATDI. The software publisher’s engineers always do everything they can to provide a rapid response».