New intelligent satellite redundancy switch from Bridge Technologies
Bridge Technologies has launched the VB273 Intelligent Satellite Redundancy Switch, the first of a new line of products from the company. The VB273 provides carrier-grade intelligent redundancy switching for satellite uplinks, with an innovative and powerful automated decision-making capability.
In a break with the approach taken by the previous generation of simple ETR alarm analysers and black box switching solutions, the Bridge VB273 system’s sophisticated analysis capabilities and standalone decision engine make it the most comprehensive and accurate solution available to date.
By incorporating a full implementation of Bridge Technologies’ advanced ETR analysis engine, the VB273 can use a far greater range of criteria than existing solutions, and base decisions on a more nuanced and realistic assessment of the data. Error conditions are evaluated against a set of user-defined rules to determine the appropriate automated action in any operational scenario.
“Redundancy switching solutions based on relatively crude ETR analysis are a less than perfect answer to the broadcaster’s requirements,” says Simen Frostad, chairman of Bridge Technologies. “They are inflexible, and may even themselves cause problems and increase costs by generating ‘false positives’ or missing complex error conditions. The innovative approach taken in the VB273 is a response to what broadcasters have requested, and it gives greater security and the cost reductions achieved through running a more intelligent solution that can be trusted to operate with a greater degree of autonomy.”
The VB273 module works with a VB272 and VB120 in a redundant chassis to monitor two signals from dual production chains and switch to the backup chain if the main chain fails. The VB273 module contains the physical switches and interfaces, with the VB272 module providing dual-channel multi-purpose monitoring of satellite broadcast signals and running the ETR290 analysis and decision engines. The VB272 also includes a high-performance RF monitoring module and supports high-throughput 16PSK and 32PSK operation as well as today’s commonly-used QPSK and 8PSK. The module provides full implementation of DISEqC v1.2 RF switch control, cue tones and a GPI interface.
In use the VB273 Intelligent Satellite Redundancy Switch integrates readily into the Bridge Technologies monitoring ecosystem, providing exceptional advanced data analysis functions through rich graphical displays, with full reporting capabilities to external network management systems. The data from the system is made available for remote monitoring by the built-in web server so that engineers and maintenance staff can be kept aware of operating status and can interrogate the system from any location.
The VB273 Intelligent Satellite Redundancy Switcher has been developed in response to a major operator’s request for a superior redundancy switching solution, and is already installed by the same operator, with general availability to the market from September 2013.