TV Technology - December 5, 2012 - (Page 24) 24 Dec 5, 2012 TV Technology www.tvtechnology.com/12-05-12 InsIghT RF Technology IEEE Broadcast Symposium in Review Part I he annual IEEE Broadcast Symposium is one of the best forums to find out about new broadcast RF 4 Doug Lung technology, whether it be antennas or transmitters, radio or television. The symposium, of course, is not limited to RF and this year there was a tutorial on IP in broadcasting focusing primarily on studio applications and a session devoted to audio in radio and TV. This month I’ll describe some of the broadcast RF presentations at this year’s event. DTV COVERAGE Wednesday afternoon’s tutorial, “Computer Simulation Tools for Broadcast Engineering” included two papers about one of my favorite topics: RF propagation and coverage analysis. Bill Meintel from Meintel, Sgrignoli and Wallace is known for his work on the software used to determine DTV coverage and interference in accordance with FCC Office of Engineering and Technology Bulletin 69 (OET-69). The law allowing the FCC T to conduct incentive auctions requires the use of OET-69 to determine coverage and interference as a result of the planned repacking to free up spectrum for wireless broadband. While some of the paper reviewed topics I’ve previously discussed, Meintel spent PROPAGATION ANALYSIS Sid Shumate from Givens and Bell presented a tutorial on “Propagation Analysis.” As with Meintel’s presentation, some of the information wasn’t new, although I found his discussion of empirical and determinis- some time explaining the complications that will come with the repacking. Before the FCC or an engineer can run a new coverage and interference study, they will have to know whether the desired station is on a new channel and the channels of interfering stations, which will change after repacking and perhaps even during the auction. Broken coax connector tic-based propagation models useful and his detailed explanation of the methods used to determine path loss in deterministic models very interesting. Shumate discussed the limitations of ITM/Longley-Rice, the basis of OET-69, with Photo by Merrill Weiss PIM can be caused by any passive component in the RF system—filters, cables, connectors, even incorrect choices of metals and plating. regards to the way it handles diffraction. He noted that the Kirchoff-Fresnel model used in ITM is now depreciated for shadow area diffraction. “New shadow-area diffraction methodology based on a better understanding of the Huygens principle, has lead to advancements in stealth technology, fractal antennas, and metamaterials, even to a patent [to the Fractal Antenna Corp.] for electromagnetic clocking,” Shumate said. ITM has not been updated to a new diffraction model, but Sid has been working on updating his ITWOM model. Perhaps sometime next year he’ll release a new version of ITWOM that improves accuracy over the version currently available with the SPLAT propagation software. For anyone looking for a review of the basics of RF propagation calculations, Shumate’s paper was included in the IEEE 2012 Broadcast Symposium ProIeee, PAge 26 software conTInued FRom PAge 23 VIRTUALIZATION From a computing perspective, virtualization is the creation of a virtual platform (network, resource, operating system or storage device) that is not an actual, i.e., dedicated or real, device. Software plays an extremely important factor in virtualization, enabling the abstraction of a system or systems to extend beyond single purpose, singularly dedicated configurations. For network systems this is referred to as a “software-defined network” or SDN. For storage systems, the industry has coined the term “software-defined storage” (SDS). At the root level, compute-systems perform basic tasks based around their operating system (OS). For example, applications running on a general purpose computer depend upon the OS to be the interface between devices such as keyboards, displays, file-organization and file-tracking. The OS becomes the traffic cop, i.e., the communications chain among other peripheral devices including storage and I/O. Running more than one operating system on the same device is a complex challenge, usually requiring that only one OS is fully functional at any given time. When multiple operating systems are enabled to run on the same hardware, the term is referred to as “paravirtualization,” which is unlike “full-virtualization,” where an entire system is emulated. In the latter, the paravirtualization’s management module is known as the “hypervisor” or “virtual-machine-monitor,” which operates with an operating system modified to work in a virtual machine. The analogies of SDN and SDS have even gone to the extent that we now have the “software-defined data center” which combines storage, servers and networking into a conglomerate that extends from the physical boundaries out into the cloud.This software-centric thinking is prevalent everywhere, it’s just called by different names and understood in varying concepts. RESOURCE POOLS Software-defined storage employs intelligent software that abstracts and transforms network switches, drive arrays, including flash memory systems, and servers into pools of resources, which are then mapped and provisioned to the applications, hosts and workflows of the organization or entity. Through virtualization, automation and the use of dynamic management toolsets, these systems become more flexible, increasing productivity levels and in turn optimizing the application experience overall. Physical and virtual disk configurations arrange redundant SAN paths, synchronize mirroring, manage caching, load balancing and are an enabler of thin-provisioning, . Pools of storage can be arranged in tiers, ranging from very fast solid-state “hot” memory through RAID sets of SATA drives (as “warm storage”) and even into active private clouds, cloud service providers or as a “cold” storage archive. Hosts can be managed over a range of operating systems such as Windows, UNIX and Linux. With the variant activities now prevalent in enterprise-class systems, tracking and metering performance becomes more complicated and is critical to understanding the efficiency of the servers, storage and networks. Monitoring systems are common in virtual environments. They observe, on a tier-by-tier basis, system activity so as to identify hot spots, such as when excessive disk I/O operations occur. In this case, the tools sets will then automatically load balance disk blocks between the active drives to prevent bottlenecks. Infrastructure functions for like and unlike devices are manageable from dashboards that reveal how each host (operating system) is attached to each tier of storage. The dashboard shows in graphic form, what is happening at an overview level so administrators can then drill down to the details to reveal where systems are being overdriven, or through the use of trending tools to diagnose how a bottleneck was generated. SDS and SDN approaches are gaining popularity in the data center and computecentric world; some in the media world feel these concepts will work their way into the media centric domain. Whatever opinion is expressed, as virtualization gains momentum we’ll need more toolsets and more management abilities to keep these systems going.Watch for more development in software-defined systems in coming years. Karl Paulsen (CPBE) is a SMPTE Fellow and the chief technology officer at Diversified Systems. Read more about other these and other storage topics in his recent book “Moving Media Storage Technologies.” Contact Karl at kpaulsen@divsystems.com. http://www.tvtechnology.com/12-05-12 Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of TV Technology - December 5, 2012 TV Technology - December 5, 2012 Table of Contents Space Jump Brings HD Video Down to Earth Auctions’ Impact on BAS The Changing Face of Master Control Customer Demand Shapes Refurbished Token Creek Truck It’s Time to CALMly Take Stock Software-Defined Systems & Virtualization IEEE Broadcast Symposium in Review The Standard Eye and Other Inconsistencies Station Automation/Digital Content Management Product & Services Showcase Classifieds Reference Guide TV Technology - December 5, 2012 http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/newbay/tvt_201610 http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/newbay/tvt_201609 http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/newbay/tvt_201608 http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/newbay/2016_me_techagenda 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