Why Fibre future proofs satellite ground station networks
By Esen Bayar, CTO
ETL Systems
As our products have been
incorporated in to many satellite
teleports worldwide, we at ETL
Systems, have realised the increase
in necessity for teleport operators
to upgrade their ground stations
inter-facility links (IFLs). The
development of high throughput
satellites which operate over Ku and
Ka-band frequencies, and requirements
for increased bandwidth have played
a major role in this development.
The transmission of RF signals
from a remote satellite dish farm to
broadcaster’s headends, uplink and
downlink applications and direct
broadcast satellite (DBS) services,
are traditionally handled by copper
coaxial cables, but as teleports
grow this option is no longer
suitable. Copper coax cables have
several shortcomings; they are bulky
and have restricted bandwidth, with
an increase in loss to the signal
quality, which limits the distance
they can transmit RF signals.
Weather conditions also have an
impact on signal continuity as coax
cable is a great conductor for
lightening. This adds to the risk of
signal loss and expensive downtime.
Here at ETL Systems, we are in
the middle of a ground up re-design
of RF over fibre and have recently
launched a new range of
ultra-compact, high resilience RF
over Fibre shelves called the
StingRay series.
Transmitting signals over fibre
eliminates all the shortcomings of
coax cable, by delivering high
quality RF signals across a long
distance with minimal loss (0.4 dB
per km). It also offers reliability
with few problems with lightning
strikes compared to copper.
Designing fibre links in to teleport
infrastructures also provides a cost
saving compared to copper cable, it
is smaller in size, and has lower
operating, administration and
maintenance costs.
The exponential growth in
teleport size and bandwidth demand
makes fibre the perfect solution as
it has a much higher information
carrying capacity, with wavelength
division multiplexing to place many
feeds on a single fibre. StingRay
IFLs transmit and receive an entire
L-band or broadband polarisation
over single mode fibre from
satellite antennas to reception
equipment up to 10 km away.
We are seeing improvements in
satellite downlink designs, where
operators are improving their
monitoring, redundancy and signal
quality. With StingRay modules
signal quality and RF performance is
preserved; such as high isolation
between modules and low IMD3,
ensuring maximum efficiency in
spectrum usage.
Unmanned teleports which are
managed from a single control room
can benefit from StingRay’s remote
control and monitoring features,
with Simple Network Management
Protocol (SNMP) and a web browser
interface available as standard.
Over the past 12 months we have
launched solutions for both indoor
and outdoor applications. The NEW
outdoor enclosure (ODU), can
withstand wide environmental
conditions and is designed to be
pole or wall mounted close to a
remote antenna.
We offer a comprehensive range of
compact chassis and fibre modules,
which are inter-operable between
chassis, with a variety of features
such as dual modules for cost and
space saving. Additional resilience
with -20dB input signal monitor
ports and redundancy configuration
options. LNB powering for uplink
chains and also modules which
convert a 10MHz reference signal
over fibre.
All of our StingRay units are
designed for reliability in service
with hot-swap fibre optic link
modules and hot-swap dual redundant
power supplies as standard.
As demands in the market change,
such as the requirement for longer
distance fibre transmissions, our RF
over fibre range will continue to
grow and we look forward to meeting
the challenge of the industry’s RF
needs.
This new RF distribution range
strengthens ETL’s position as an
established player in the RF
distribution market and broadens our
capability, making it easier for
system integrators to exclusively
choose ETL technology for RF
distribution in all teleport areas.
