Carrier ID for Satellite Broadcast Uplinks Gaining Momentum
Efforts to standardize carrier ID in satellite broadcast uplinks are moving forward quickly, though there’s some disagreement among satellite operators about the timing, said industry executives. There are two standards being considered for the service, one that is more likely for use in the immediate future and another that’s in development.
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Operators and earth station manufacturers have been working closely together to implement carrier ID, which is meant to help limit interference, most often caused by accidentally misaligned earth stations. The ID would be embedded in the transmission and contain some information on where the signal originated. Eutelsat drew a line in the sand this year when it said it planned to require carrier ID for all broadcasts of the London Olympics next summer (CD Oct 14 p10). That time frame has been considered as an industry goal for a while, though SES and Intelsat have been less willing to commit, said industry executives. Eutelsat is able to roll out the necessary pieces slightly more easily because it’s a more regionally focused operator than SES and Intelsat, whose fleets are farther reaching, they said.
In the near future, the plan is to add Carrier ID within the network information table (NIT), said Mark Rawlins, head of payload engineering and operations at Eutelsat. The NIT is already sent within transmissions to provide information about the network. While that method can be implemented quickly, when there is interference, the NIT can also be interfered with because the NIT can’t be read. The ID takes about 70 bytes, a very small part of a broadcast uplink, said Rawlins.
In the works is another standard, in which the Carrier ID would be sent separately from the transmission. That standard, which was developed by Comtech, is being reviewed by Digital Video Broadcasting, an international standards body. The longer-term goal of a DVB solution will take more time because “by necessity, it’s a consortium approach working on a more robust and complex solution, not something that happens overnight,” said Stewart Sanders, senior vice president of customer service delivery for SES.
So far there hasn’t been any real concern within the industry over Carrier ID, said Rawlins. He hasn’t “spoken to or heard from anybody that has resisted,” he said. There really “hasn’t been a problem with the broadcasting sector,” said David Hartshorn, secretary general of the Global VSAT Forum.
The next real question is when Carrier ID will be required. The Eutelsat decision to require Carrier ID for Olympics transmissions was a “game changer,” said Hartshorn, though its unclear how closely other operators will follow. Several companies are working toward “using Carrier ID for the Olympics; however, given the work required to make this happen, including firmware upgrades and collation of the IDs, we have to be practical about how this is implemented,” said Sanders. Most interference isn’t deliberate and “our primary aim is to remove the interference by working with the customers causing as well as affected by it,” he said. “We need their cooperation to do this and will encourage a relationship of trust in order to share relevant information for these purposes,” he said.
It’s too early to say what kind of expense the Carrier ID will impose on satellite operators, said Ron Busch, Intelsat vice president-network operation. The largest cost will be related to the monitoring of Carrier IDs, he said. Intelsat, for instance, has 37 monitoring sites around the world, so adding Carrier ID monitoring capabilities may add some significant cost, he said. On the user side, the system isn’t expected to be much of an expense at all, he said.