The Background
Dialog TV (DTV) is a direct broadcast satellite pay TV service provider based in Sri Lanka. The company is the only direct-to-home (DTH) satellite TV operator in the country. Its main business is to sell television receive-only (TVRO) antennas to end consumers and charge monthly subscription fees. Currently, DTV has millions of customers in Sri Lanka.
Coverage is provided over the entirety of Sri Lanka through the Intelsat 38 Ku-band satellite. DTV currently owns a satellite earth station in the capital city of Colombo.
As the station has been in operation for eight years now, system instability issues may occur in some cases. This is a concern, as there is no secondary earth station to provide backup services.
Another concern for DTV is that a natural disaster might damage its sole satellite earth station. Damage to the earth station might interrupt signal transmission and affect TV program reception across the country for its customers.
For these reasons, DTV decided to build an on-site backup satellite earth station in another city to provide redundancy. That way, if a problem does occur at the main station in Colombo, the system can be switched over to the backup station via remote control to ensure stable signal transmission.
The Challenge
Integrating old and new equipment into a seamless system in a hard to
reach location
DTV is an experienced direct broadcast satellite pay TV service operator, so its design and performance specifications for the on-site backup station were stringent and demanding.
A further logistical difficulty for the project is that the location of the on-site backup station is in the relatively remote area of Puttalam, north of Colombo. As the country is suffering from fuel shortages, it made it more difficult to transport equipment and personnel to the backup earth satellite station construction site.
In addition, as the backup station is being put together using both existing equipment provided by DTV and new equipment and software systems provided by Hytera, it is essential that the existing equipment, new equipment, and software systems are seamlessly combined. That meant Hytera engineers had to have a thorough knowledge of the customer’s existing equipment and the skills to integrate the two sets of equipment in terms of both
software and hardware.
Hytera’s role on the project was essentially that of a systems integrator, as well as being the provider of a new network management system (NMS), a carrier monitoring system (CMS), and a software integration solution.
The new network management system (NMS) provided by Hytera makes work much easier and simpler for staff as equipment status, parameter monitoring and adjustment, and remote control of the devices can be achieved on a single page of the NMS. The NMS integrates both the new solutions provided by Hytera and the existing equipment of the client.
The new CMS provided by Hytera can monitor the carrier spectrum status of satellite signals in real-time and ensure stable signal transmission and reception. As most of the client’s equipment has already been in use for over 10 years, the communication protocols being used may not be supported by the system. So, Hytera had to develop a software driver to integrate the old equipment into the new system.
The Benefits
Redundancy and Resilience
The main benefit of the new earth station is that it provides DTV with an on-site backup capability, which strengthens the reliability of the overall system, ensures the operational stability of the client’s business, and provides customers with a better viewing experience.
Improved Efficiency
With the new NMS system and CMS system, equipment monitoring and control as well as carrier spectrum status monitoring can be done remotely and efficiently.