from the presidentbts.ieee.org/images/files/newsletters/winter06.pdf · volume 14, number 4, winter...

IEEE

From the PresidentDear BTS Members:

As I wrap up myfifth and final year asBTS President, thisedition of “From thePresident” will bemy last opportunityto communicate with

you in this Newsletter space. So, thisexpanded column will be a “State of theSociety” report, reflecting on ourprogress and on some of the opportuni-ties and challenges still ahead. I’ll focusfirst on three areas – Membership, Con-ferences, and Publications – which alsorepresent our three income streams.Then, I'll discuss our Project Initiatives –both continuing and new – and windup with some financial and operationalissues.

Membership. I’ve reported the goodnews and the not-so-good news aboutmembership in several previousNewsletters. After declining steadily fromits peak in 1995, BTS membership heldits own in 2005, actually eking out asmall gain of 0.2 percent. Each monththis year, we've seen an increase overthe same month last year – except forFebruary, when the Terminator dropped542, or 29 percent, of our 2005 memberswho had not renewed. This was theaverage percentage loss for all Societies,and one percent less than the loss forIEEE overall. August is the close of thedues year, and the benchmark for deter-mining retention. (Beginning in Septem-ber, new memberships are valid throughthe end of the upcoming year.) As ofthis August, BTS was up by 3.5 percentover a year ago, one of only 16 societies

As the seasonchanges from fallto winter here onthe east coast ofthe United Stateschanges are alsohappening withinthe BTS. As ofJanuary we will

have a new president and vice-presi-dent. Bill Hayes of Iowa Public Tele-vision will succeed Tom Gurley aspresident and your Newsletter Editorwill become the new vice presidentreplacing Charlie Einolf. (See insidefor an article on the new officers).

Tom’s term will expire at the end

of 2006 and he is not eligible to con-tinue. Likewise, Charlie’s term alsowill come to an end. Although wewould have been happy to haveCharlie step into the presidency healso is not eligible since he is nowpresident of the Industrial ElectronicsSociety and cannot serve in the samecapacity for two societies. Charlie hasalso served as the chair of our publi-cations committee that is traditionallyone of the duties of the vice-presi-dent. I am happy to report that Char-lie has agreed (subject to theexpected approval of the new presi-dent) to continue as chairman of the

The technologies to deliver information and entertainment to audiences worldwide, at home and on the go.

From the Editor

continued on page 2

ISSN 1067-490X

Volume 14, Number 4, Winter 2006

(out of 39) to show an increase. This iseven more impressive considering theaverage 3.3-percent decline in Societymemberships overall, and only a 0.9-percent increase in total IEEE member-

continued on page 2

InsideThe BTS AdCom Elects BTS President and Vice President . . . . . .4BTS Information Booth and Tutorialat IBC 2006 Attracted Many Visitorsand Created Much Interest . . . . . . . .556th Annual Broadcast Symposiuma Great Success! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6IEEE.tv Demonstrated at the IEEE BTSBroadcast Symposium . . . . . . . . . . .8IEEE.tv: New Broadcaster Hits Town .8United States Moving Closer to AllDigital Television . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9ATSC Work Progresses on DRL Standard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10A Fresh Look at Fessenden’s 1906Broadcast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12100th Anniversary of the Vacuum Tube . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15Japan IEEE BTS Chapter Report . . . . .17Taipei IEEE BTS Chapter Report . . . . .17Report of the IEEE Joint BT/CE/COMRussia Northwest (St. Petersburg)Chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18The ITU-T IPTV Focus Group SecondMeeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19The Regional RadiocommunicationsConference 2006 (RRC-06) . . . . . . . . . .22IEEE International Symposium on Broadband Multimedia Systems andBroadcasting 2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25BTS Senior Administrator has new Addition to her family! . . . . . . . . . . . . .26IEEE BTS Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . .27

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IEEE Broadcast Technology Society Newsletter 2 Winter 2006

Newsletter Deadlines

The BTS Newsletter welcomes con-tributions from every member.Please forward materials you wouldlike included to the editor [email protected]. Here areour deadlines for upcoming issues:

Issue Due Date

Spring, 2007 January 20, 2007Summer, 2007 April 20, 2007Fall, 2007 July 20, 2007Winter, 2007 October 20, 2007

IEEE Broadcast Technology Society Newsletter (ISSN 1067-490X) is published quar-terly by the Broadcast Technology Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electron-ics Engineers, Inc. Headquarters address: 345 East 47th Street, New York, NY10017-2394. Sent at a cost of $1.00 per year to each member of the Broadcast Tech-nology Society. Printed in USA. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and atadditional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to: IEEE BroadcastTechnology Society Newsletter, IEEE, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08855.

© 2006 IEEE. Information contained in this newsletter may be copied without per-mission provided that copies are not made or distributed for direct commercialadvantage, and the title of the publication and its date appear.

publications committee as I will weartwo hats as both vice-president andeditor of the Newsletter at least forthe immediate future.

I would like to take this opportuni-ty to thank Tom for all his hard workin trying to improve our society. Dur-ing Tom’s tenure, we began a strategicplanning effort and have made signifi-cant progress in identifying a numberof areas where the Society can beimproved to offer more value to ourmembership. Under Tom’s leadership,membership has begun to increaseafter a significant decline. Tom wasalso largely responsible for launchinglast April a new and successful Inter-national Symposium on BroadbandMultimedia Systems and Broadcasting.These are just a few of the accom-plishments that have taken place onTom’s watch. Thanks Tom for all thehard work and we hope that you willcontinue to be involved as we can allbenefit from your knowledge andinsight as we try to move the Societyforward.

Thanks also go out to Charlie whohas always been there to try and keepus on course. Charlie has also chairedthe publications committee during aperiod that has seen our Transactionspublication not only grow in size andquality but more importantly for oursociety it has vastly improved itsstanding among the other publicationsrelated to communications. Manythanks to Charlie and we look for-ward to your continued involvement.

I would also like to congratulate

From the President continued

Bill Hayes on his being elected societypresident and I am excited and look-ing forward to working with Bill inboth may capacity as Newsletter editorand as the society vice-president.

Congratulations are also in orderfor Guy Bouchard and the members ofhis committee on another very suc-cessful fall Symposium. From myobservation we had a great turnoutand as usual very worthwhile sessions.It was also good to see old friendsand have the opportunity to makesome new ones. If you have neverattended the BTS Fall Symposiumplease start making plans to attendnext year you’ll be glad you did.Details will appear on the BTS WebSite as soon as the plans are finalized.

We have also heard that the IBCwas once again very successful. This isgreat news for the BTS since as one ofthe partners in the IBC we reap a sub-stantial financial benefit as well as

helping promote our society outsidethe United States.

As reported in this column on sev-eral occasions I continue to be com-mitted to adding more meaningfulcontent to the Newsletter. To that endthis issue contains an article from JerryWhitaker about ATSC Work Progresseson the DRL Standard, a broadcast his-tory article from James O’Neal and thefirst in a series of articles on theprogress of transition to digital televi-sion in the United States. These are inaddition to our usual news reportsfrom our chapters and reports on therecent Symposium and the very suc-cessful IBC.

As always I encourage you to shareyour own knowledge and contributeand there may be some added incen-tive in the near future – stay tuned formore details.

Bill [email protected]

From the Editor continued

ship. So, we're doing well in attractingnew members to BTS. But, both BTSand IEEE need to improve retentionrates. This represents a challenge toidentify members' needs better, and tocontinue developing new products andservices that will provide increased valuefor your ongoing membership.

Conferences. One of our new proj-ect initiatives budgeted for this yearcalled for establishing a conference inthe emerging technology area ofMobile/Multimedia Broadcasting. BTSsuccessfully launched the new confer-ence in April – the IEEE InternationalSymposium on Broadband Multimedia

Systems and Broadcasting, or Broad-band Multimedia 2006. Although wehad been prepared for a loss on thisinaugural conference, it proved to besuccessful both financially and techni-cally. Some one hundred attendeeswere on hand in Las Vegas for the two-day conference, featuring sixty technicalpresentations and keynotes from indus-try leaders, and representing seventeencountries.

The Broadband Multimedia Sympo-sium was co-located with CTIA WIRE-LESS 2006, adding this annual wirelessindustry trade show to the roster ofmajor conventions at which BTS has a

continued on page 3


Winter 2006 3 IEEE Broadcast Technology Society Newsletter

significant presence. Most of the atten-dees were neither members of BTS nortraditional broadcasters, presenting anopportunity for BTS to reach a previ-ously untapped, more diverse, andyounger demographic.

In 2007, our Broadband MultimediaSymposium will be one of three IEEEconferences under the umbrella of "IEEE@ CTIA WIRELESS 2007." BTS is also aco-sponsor of one of the other confer-ences – the IEEE International Confer-ence on Portable Information Devices,or Portable 2007. The IEEE Communi-cations Society is facilitating the umbrellaevent, through its established relation-ship with CTIA. Given the rapid conver-gence of multimedia broadcasting,telecommunications, consumer electron-ics, and networking technologies, suchintersociety, interdisciplinary collabora-tion is increasingly important.

BTS continued its longstanding part-nership with the NAB Broadcast Engi-neering Conference in April, presentinga technology tutorial on "DeliveringTelevision to Handheld Devices" to astanding-room-only audience. We lookforward each year to bringing our tuto-rial content and our membership mes-sage to NAB attendees.

Our financial partnership in the Inter-national Broadcasting Convention (IBC)provides the largest source of incomefor BTS, and it also provides anothermajor forum for sharing our tutorialcontent and disseminating our member-ship message. Our contribution to theConference Program raises the profile ofIEEE-BTS as a partner of IBC, and itcontributes to the IBC mission of "bythe Industry, for the Industry." Thisyear's Tutorial on Video Display Tech-nology, presented on September 7,drew a capacity audience of some onehundred attendees.

The IEEE Annual Broadcast Sympo-sium, a tradition for 56 years, continuesto be our flagship event, even as itdiversifies and evolves with the changesin our industry. As I told our audiencein September, the Broadcast Symposium"is as old as radio, yet as up-to-date asmobile TV and IPTV." This year's Sym-posium drew 167 people from 11 coun-tries, a 24-percent increase inattendance over last year.

Publications. The Transactions onBroadcasting has reached a new mile-stone in prestige. Based on the rank-ings of the 2005 Journal Citation Reports(JCR), published by Thomson Scientific,our Transactions moved into the top25% of journals in the Telecommunica-tions field, ranking 14 out of 59. In2004 and 2003, the Transactions ranked20th and 33rd in the field, respectively.Out of 208 Electrical and ElectronicsEngineering journals, worldwide, theTransactions ranked 61 in 2005, up from92 in 2004 and 139 in 2003. The JCRranks journals by their impact factor – ameasure of a journal's influence in theglobal research community, based onthe number of times its articles havebeen cited.

A number of BTS members con-tributed to the January 2006 Proceed-ings of the IEEE Special Issue on GlobalDigital Television. The introductoryOverview, by four of our memberswho served as Guest Editors, was oneof the most downloaded papers fromIEEE Xplore in January. All BTS mem-bers received a complimentary copybundled with their March issue of theTransactions.

In 2007, the Transactions will publisha Special Issue on Mobile MultimediaBroadcasting. With more than 300pages of high-quality papers, this willbe a separately bound publication bun-dled with the regular March issue of theTransactions.

Our Newsletter also continues toimprove, in both the quantity and quali-ty of its content. Its look was colorfullyupdated last year, and each of the pastfour quarterly issues has had twenty ormore pages of reports on BTS activities,industry news, interesting feature arti-cles, and brief technical papers. Wecontinue to seek timely, practical, andapplications-oriented content for theNewsletter, to complement the research-and-development emphasis of theTransactions.

Initiatives. In the Fall 2005 Newslet-ter, we described three new BTS projectinitiatives planned for this year: Mobile& Multimedia Broadcasting Technology;Conference/Publication on Mobile/Mul-timedia Broadcasting; and BroadcasterEducation. Under the first project, we

worked with the IEEE MembershipDevelopment Committee to conductFocus Groups at CTIA WIRELESS 2006,the venue for our new Broadband Mul-timedia Symposium. Analysis of theconsultant's report on these FocusGroups and those conducted at IBC andNAB last year, and identification anddevelopment of appropriate productsand services to address this new tech-nology segment, are ongoing into 2007.Under the second project, we launchedour new Symposium in April and pre-pared for the publication of our Trans-actions Special Issue in the first quarterof 2007. Progress on the third projecthas lagged this year, primarily due tothe unavailability of volunteer resources,but funding for the Broadcaster Educa-tion Initiative will be continued into2007. Work is already underway onscholarship programs that will beannounced next year, and tutorial con-tent from this year's two Symposiumshas been recorded for re-purposing viathe Web – either an enhanced BTS web-site or the new IEEE.tv.

Enhancement of the BTS website, toprovide a "spiffier" multimedia webpresence and links to IEEE.tv content, isone new initiative for next year. We'velearned from our Focus Groups thatmembers want more immediate accessto information and better opportunitiesfor networking with others in the indus-try. The ubiquity of the Web can sup-port these needs, if we can figure outhow to use it more effectively.

We've also budgeted a MembershipInitiative for 2007. This will address thechallenge I described above, under Mem-bership – how to improve retention, aswell as attract new members, by improv-ing the value proposition. We also wantto bring BTS closer to its members byenhancing and expanding our local chap-ter activities worldwide. This is anotherneed expressed by our Focus Groups.We are already identifying potential loca-tions for new local chapters, and we urgeyou to help us in this effort. This is oneactivity that cannot succeed without localvolunteer participation.

Our Standards budget has beenincreased for 2007, to permit participa-tion in the ITU-T work on IPTV stan-dardization, continuation of our liaison


with the IEEE 802.22 work on unlicensedWireless Regional Area Networks thatwill operate in the broadcast TV bands,and our traditional work on broadcast RFand Audio/Video standards and our par-ticipation in the ATSC. Our Focus Groupshave emphasized the importance of ourhelping members to understand and usestandards. So, our direct participation inthe development of those standards forour industry is vital.

Finance & Operational Issues. OurSociety is financially sound, with growingincome and reserves, thanks largely toour partnership in the IBC, which contin-ues to grow each year. BTS has becomea million-dollar business, serving some2,000 clients worldwide. But, it operateswithin the framework and with access tothe resources of the IEEE, the world’slargest technical professional association,which has more than 350,000 members,and is a $300M global business.

BTS, like all of the IEEE, is a volun-

teer-driven organization, and our loyaland growing cadre of volunteersremains our bedrock. But, the execu-tion of many of our activities lags due tothe significant amount of effort and timerequired, which is getting to be increas-ingly difficult for volunteers to accom-modate in their busy schedules. Thisresource shortfall may be attributed toour relatively small pool of members,compared to other Societies, and the rel-atively large proportion of membersfrom industry, whose day job has priori-ty over volunteer time. But, this limitsour ability to meet our members' andpotential members’ needs and to fulfilltheir expectations upon renewing orjoining BTS. As an example, implemen-tation of the plans developed over thepast couple of years by our StrategicPlanning Committee has, itself, laggeddue to the lack of volunteer time toaddress it. Going forward, it will beimperative for BTS to operate more like

a business and increasingly look to paidpersonnel to provide management,administrative, editorial, and project sup-port, as more and more Societies arealready doing. Fortunately, unlike someother small Societies, BTS has the requi-site financial resources.

In closing, I want to thank all of youfor your membership and support ofBTS over these past five years. It hasbeen a pleasure and an honor for me toserve as your President. The revitaliza-tion of BTS is a work in progress, begunby my predecessor, Gary Cavell, whoestablished a solid foundation uponwhich we could build. It will continueunder the leadership of Bill Hayes, towhom this space will belong in the nextNewsletter.

With best regards,Tom Gurley

PresidentIEEE Broadcast Technology Society

[email protected]


The BTS AdCom Elects BTS President and Vice PresidentEFFECTIVE 1 JANUARY 2007

William T. Hayes IEEE BTS President 2007Director of Engineering and TechnologyIowa Public TelevisionBill Hayes received a Bachelors Degree inCommunications in 1977 and has workedin broadcasting since 1973 in both radio

and television. He has planned and constructed two start-up full power television stations. In addition Bill has exten-sive experience in planning, design and the construction ofall facets of a television station. He is currently responsiblefor the planning and development of all technology proj-ects at Iowa Public Television (IPTV) including RF trans-mission facilities, studio origination facilities and 750interactive classroom facilities throughout the State of Iowa.In addition to his position at IPTV, Bill is also an author forTV Technology, a leading technical magazine. He is amember of the IEEE BTS, SMPTE and SBE and is involvedwith the educational and standards committees for theseorganizations.

William Meintel IEEE BTS Vice President 2007Meintel, Sgrignoli and Wallace ConsultantsBill Meintel holds an Electrical Engineeringdegree and has 37 years experience in thecommunications field. After graduation, Billwas employed by the FCC, first as a fieldengineer and then in the Media Bureau’s Poli-

cy and Rules Division. There, Bill directed the development ofseveral major computer modeling projects related to spectrumutilization and planning related to broadcasting. He entered pri-vate practice in 1989, and has been heavily involved in techni-cal consulting, computer modeling and spectrum planning forthe broadcast industry. During that period he co-authored areport for the NAB on spectrum requirements for DAB, createda plan for independent television broadcasting for Romania andhas been extensively involved in spectrum planning for digitaltelevision in both the US and internationally. Currently Bill is apartner in the consulting firm of Meintel, Sgrignoli and Wallace.

Bill has been a member of the Broadcast Technology Soci-ety for the past 17 years, is in his second term as an at largemember of the AdCom and has been editor of its BTSNewsletter since 2003. He is also a member of the Engineer-ing Honor Society Tau Beta Pi.

On 26 September 2006, the BTS AdCom voted in a new President and Vice President to succeed President Tom Gurley andVice President Charles Einolf, Jr. effective on 1 January 2007. Our Society expresses its deep thanks and appreciation to Presi-dent Gurley and Vice President Einolf for providing outstanding dedication, leadership and guidance for advancing the mis-sion and goals of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society during the past five years.



BTS Information Booth and Tutorial at IBC 2006Attracted Many Visitors and Created Much InterestThe IEEE BTS team of President TomGurley, IBC Board Representative MikeBennett, IEEE Transactions on Broad-casting Editor-in-Chief Yiyan Wu, andAdministrator Kathy Colabaugh,planned, organized and staffed the BTSInformation Booth at IBC 2006. TheBroadcast Technology Society partici-pates on the IBC Partnership Boardwhich represents the owners of IBC.The IBC conference and exhibitionwas a great success this year, with over45,000 people attending from over 130countries and over 1200 companiesshowcasing business ideas in broad-casting and media. The IEEE BTS Infor-mation Booth was active during theentire event, signing up 18 new BTSmembers, and answering an array ofquestions about IEEE and BTS services,benefits and publications. In addition,the IEEE BTS team met several people

who expressed an interest in authoringpapers for the IEEE Transactions onBroadcasting and the BTS Newsletter.

On Thursday, 7 September, BTS pre-sented a Tutorial on Video Display Tech-nology. BTS is a co-sponsor of theIEEE/OSA Journal of Display Technolo-gy, which was launched last year.AdCom members Richard Friedel of Foxand David Bancroft of Thomson UKwere instrumental in crafting this tutorialand rounding up the guest speakers.The tutorial included leading researchersand developers worldwide to explainrecent developments in the context ofboth consumer and professional applica-tions. It also offered a peek at emergingtechnology still in the laboratory. DavidBancroft did an outstanding job as Chairand Moderator of the Video DisplayTechnology Panel. Speakers includedHans Hoffman - European Broadcasting

Union, Switzerland, John Zubrzycki -BBC Research, UK, Charles Poynton -Consultant, Canada, Paul Boynton -National Institute of Standards and Tech-nology, USA and Hugo Gaggioni - SonyElectronics USA. Over 100 peopleattended the tutorial, filling the meetingroom to capacity. The IEEE BTS extendsit heartiest thanks and appreciation toDavid and Richard for their efforts in thissuccessful event.

Below are photographs from theBTS sponsored Video Display Tech-nology tutorial.

The IEEE BTS representation at theannual IBC conference and exhibitionproves to be a continuing successevery year. Next year, the IBC eventwill be held in Amsterdam, TheNetherlands, with the technical confer-ence from 6-10 September 2007 andexhibition from 7-11 September 2007.

Dave Bancroft, John Zubrzycki, Charles Poynton and PaulBoynton follow a presentation on the monitors.

Hans Hoffman presents his topic “IEEE Seminar on VideoDisplays: State of the art and user requirements”

The IEEE BTS presence in the IBC Partnership Village Hallway banners promote the partners of IBC



56th Annual Broadcast Symposium a Great Success!Some 31 presentations and over 160 Attendees at the September event in Washington, DC, USA

David E. Young, VP Verizon, keynotespeaker at the joint BTS/AFCCE

luncheon. “Fiber to the Premises:Lighting the Way to Cable Competition”

John Abel, US Telecom Assoc, Keynotespeaker at the BTS Awards luncheon

“Where are the Digital NetworksTaking Us?”

John Day, IEEE, provides a luncheontalk on “Introduction to IEEE.tv”

Camera crew taping Symposiumsessions for IEEE.tv

Matti S. Siukola Memorial Award. Sid Shumate with winner Andy Bater -

In recognition of the best paperpresented at the IEEE 55th Annual

Broadcast Symposium entitled “A FlatEarth DTx Implementation.”

Scott Helt Memorial Award for the bestpaper in the Transactions on

Broadcasting for 2005. Yiyan Wu withwinner Matthew Rabinowitz – for the

paper co-authored with James J.Spilker, Jr. entitled “A New Positioning

System Using TelevisionSynchronization Signals”

Past President Jerry Berman (1993-1994) and President-Elect Bill Hayes

(2007-2008)

Symposium Chair Guy Bouchard, attendeeMark Fehlig of Georgia Public

Broadcasting, BTS President Tom Gurley,and Dennis Wallace of Meintel, Sgrignoli

and Wallace.

Speaker Young-Woo Suh from Korea,Assistant Technical Program ManagerJames Fang, speaker Rodrigo Admir

Vaz from Brazil



Presenters of the on-channel repeaterpapers for 3 major broadcasting

standards (L to R) Jonathan Loo (BrunelUniversity, UK, DVB-T standard),

Koichira Imamura (NHK, Japan, ISDB-Tstandard) and Young-Woo Suh (KBS,

Korea, ATSC standard), and Yiyan Wu(CRC, Canada)

Your BTS Team working at theSymposium. (L to R) Jessica Lotito,

IEEE Conference Planner, KathyColabaugh, BT Society Administrator,

and Lynda Bernstein, BTS PublicationsCoordinator

Attendees at the joint BTS/AFCCELuncheon

BTS President Tom Gurley addressesthe Luncheon group

Speaker Jian Song, giving the firstpresentation, outside of China, of their

newly adopted DTV standard

Panel Discussion on Unlicensed Devices in the TV Bands.Panelists (L to R), Carl Stevenson – WK3C Wireless LLC, VictorTawil – Assoc for Maximum Service Television, Alan Waltho –

Intel Corporation, Khalil Salehian – CommunicationsResearch Ctr, CanadaAdvanced VSB System display at the Symposium with

speaker Jungpil Yu, Samsung

Symposium speaker Jonathan Loo,UK, enjoys the BTS Newsletter



IEEE.tv Demonstrated at the IEEE BTS BroadcastSymposium On 28 September 2006, a special luncheon presentation was provided to the IEEE Broadcast Symposium attendees. John Day,Senior Manager of Business Development for IEEE Regional Activities, provided a highly informative briefing followed by avideo presentation which demonstrated the new IEEE Internet broadcasting service called IEEE.tv. Below is an overview ofIEEE.tv as published in the 5 October 2006 issue of the IEEE Institute. BTS members are encouraged to visit the IEEE.tv site andmake use of this new service.

IEEE.tv: New Broadcaster Hits Town by John Day

After more than 100 years of publishingmagazines, the IEEE might think broad-casting is outside its scope. Studios,lights, cameras, microphones—the com-plexity of it all seemed too daunting toconsider seriously. But IEEE felt it had arole to play and released its Internetbroadcasting network in August.

“IEEE.tv is intended to make broad-casting a vibrant and valuable compo-nent of the IEEE member’sexperience,” says Pedro Ray, vice pres-ident of IEEE Regional Activities, thearea that oversees the station. “And itwill advance the IEEE’s commitment toeducating the public on importanttechnology and engineering issues.”

IEEE.tv features original content,with broadcasts that include coverageof IEEE conferences, interviews withIEEE book authors, primers on technol-ogy-related careers, and overviews ofIEEE products and services. The prere-corded programs run anywhere from 5to 45 minutes; it is expected that mostprograms will be 15 minutes or less.

TWO TRACKS IEEE.tv comes in two formats: theMember/Basic format, available only

to members, can be accessed throughthe myIEEE members-only portal(www.ieee.org/myieee), while thefreely available Public Access format(www.ieee.org/ieeetv) offers informa-tion about careers in technology andengineering and offers demonstrationsof new technology used in everydayapplications. The presence of a pad-lock-shaped icon in the margin of aprogram indicates that it’s only formember access.

Programs are divided into fiveareas that reflect the different aspectsof the IEEE experience, according toDavid Green, chair of the IEEE.tvAdvisory Group.• Conference Highlights provides

an overview of selected IEEE con-ferences and includes interviewswith key presenters. Conference-related programming will appearmonthly. Upcoming programs focuson ethics in engineering, and usinganalog circuitry in a digital era.

• Meet the Authors presents inter-views with IEEE authors who havewritten books in a variety of techni-cal and engineering fields. Forexample, currently Richard Schreier

talks about his book “Understand-ing Delta Sigma Converters”(Wiley–IEEE Press, 2004). Later thisyear, Mostafa Sherif will shareinsights from his book “ManagingProjects in Telecom Services”(Wiley–IEEE Press, 2006).

• Careers in Technology explorestechnology careers and develop-ments in new technical disciplines; italso profiles various interesting jobs.

• IEEE.tv Specials profiles significantpeople in technology and engineer-ing and chronicles past historicaldevelopments. Now playing is aquestion-and-answer session withthe two 2007 President-Elect candi-dates, Lewis Terman and John Vig.

• IEEE Products gives brief intro-ductions to IEEE initiatives andproducts, such Expert Now IEEE,which are 1- to 2-hour online train-ing courses based on tutorials pre-sented at IEEE conferences.As of mid-September, about 10 pro-

grams were available for viewing onIEEE.tv, and new programs are contin-ually being added.

For more information, visitwww.ieee.org/ieeetv.


This is to the first in a series of articlesdocumenting the transition to an alldigital television system in the UnitedStates.

After almost 20 years, the UnitedStates is in the final countdown to anall digital television system. The moveto digital began with a petition to theU. S. Federal Communications Com-mission (FCC) on February 13, 1987.That petition requested that the FCClaunch an inquiry into to the impact ofadvanced technologies on existing tel-evision broadcasting and the FCC’sspectrum allocation policies relating totelevision. In response to that petition,the FCC adopted a Notice of Inquiry(NOI) on July 16, 1987covering abroad range of issues relating to over-the-air television service.

Three years later in 1990, afternumerous proposals had been put for-ward for an Advanced Television Sys-tem (ATV) for the country, the FCCmade some initial decisions. It wasdecided that the new television systemwould use 6 MHz wide channels with-in the existing spectrum allocated fortelevision in the United States. It wasfurther decided that it was impracticalto develop a system that would bebackward compatible with the existinganalog system. Therefore, in order tomake a successful transition, a secondchannel would be required for eachstation, and during the transition peri-od the new operations could notcause significant degradation to theexisting service.

During the next several years, twointertwined projects were undertaken.On the one side was an enormousand competing effort to define thetechnical parameters for the new sys-tem. Yet at the same time a separatebut unavoidably connected projectwas required to find available spec-trum within the existing U. S. televi-sion bands to accommodate the newsystem’s requirements without a sig-

nificant disruption of the current serv-ice of approximately 1800 high pow-ered stations. (It is noted that it wasdetermined to be impractical at thetime to also add a second channel foror to protect the existing facilities ofseveral thousand low power stations.)

Finally in February of 1998, elevenyears after the initial inquiry wasbegun, an all digital system (the initialproposals were all analog) had beendefined, a table of channel allocationsfor the full power stations was final-ized and construction of facilitiescould begin. At that time the transi-tion to the all digital system and thetermination of analog operation wasvery optimistically set to occur at theend of 2006. Even though a systemhad been defined and channels hadbeen allotted, there was still an enor-mous amount of work to completebefore the country could fully transi-tion to digital. Stations had to be con-structed, reasonably priced receivershad to be designed, the public wouldneed to be educated and, moreimportantly, accept the fact that newbroadcast transmission equipmentwould need to be purchased. In addi-tion, a plan to transition the severallow power stations to digital had noteven been discussed.

The final transition has been fur-ther complicated by the fact that theamount of spectrum available for tele-vision broadcasting was to shrink by108 MHz. Television channels 52 to69 would not be available for broad-cast use after the transition. Eventhough the current analog channelswould be turned off and could beused to accommodate stations current-ly using spectrum between channels52 and 69, this presented anotherchallenge for the U. S. broadcastindustry. Also, in the period after1998, there was no criterion to deter-mine which channels would becomeavailable since the requirements were

only that a station would have to giveup one of its channels.

As the 2006 date approached it wasobvious that it would be impossible,because of numerous technical andpolitical reasons, to meet that dead-line. Therefore, a new deadline ofFebruary 17, 2009 has been estab-lished for shutting off full service ana-log broadcast transmission in theUnited States. No date has yet beenset for the termination of low poweranalog operations.

In August of 2004, the FCCannounced the procedure by whichfull power stations would elect thechannel for digital (DTV) operationafter the transition. The processwould have three selection roundsbeginning in December of 2004 withstations participating in the variousrounds based on the following criteria.• Round One - Station licensees with

two in-core channels (channels 2 –51) elect the channel they prefer toretain for digital broadcasting, andlicensees with one in-core and oneout-of-core channel (channels 52 –69) elect whether to use their in-core channel for post transition dig-ital operation.

• Round Two - Station licenseeswithout a current in-core channelassignment elect a channel fromthose available after Round One.

• Round Three - Station licensees notyet assigned a channel, or assignedchannel 2 through 6, may elect achannel from those available afterRound Two.Stations electing a channel other

than their current digital channelwould be required to provide interfer-ence protection for stations remainingon their digital channel or stations thathad been given a tentative final digitalchannel in a pervious round. In addi-tion, stations making elections in thesame round would need to provideinterference protection to each other.


United States Moving Closer to All Digital TelevisionSystemBy Bill Meintel


Between each round, the FCCwould announce which channels areprotected, which are in conflict, andwhich are available. Station licenseeswith conflicts were required to decidewhether to accept interference andremain on elected channels or moveto the next election round.

After the third Round the FCCwould then resolve any remainingconflicts and issue a Notice of Pro-posed Rulemaking proposing andseeking comment on the final DTVTable of Allotments.

At this time, Round 3 has been con-cluded and on October 20, 2006 theFCC released a Notice of ProposedRule Making to finalize the post transi-tion DTV table of allotted channels.Interested parties have until January11, 2007 to file their comments on theproposed table and reply comments(comments on the initial comments)must be filed by February 12, 2007.After receiving and reviewing the com-ments the FCC will finalize the table.

Once the table is final, stations that arechanging channel for post transition oper-

ation will be able to begin building theirnew facilities. At this point, it appears thatmore than 500 stations out of a total of1800 plus stations will be moving to anew channel for post transition operation.Almost all of these new channels are cur-rently in use by another station or adja-cent to a currently occupied channel thatwill continue to operate until February 17,2009. In addition there are the severalthousand low power stations that willalso need to be eventually transitioned todigital. These challenges will be discussedin future articles.


ATSC Work Progresses on DRL StandardBy Jerry Whitaker, VP of Standards Development,Advanced Television Systems Committee, Inc.

The ATSC Specialist Group on DigitalElectronic News Gathering (ENG)invites comments on a CandidateStandard that specifies the means forautomatic transmitter power control ofremote ENG links. This work, whichbegan in February 2005 in the“TSG/S3” committee, is being led byDane Ericksen of Hammett & EdisonConsulting Engineers, who representsthe Society of Broadcast Engineers(SBE) on this project.

An ATSC Candidate Standard is adocument that has received significantreview within a specialist group.Advancement of a document to Candi-date Standard is an explicit call tothose outside of the related specialistgroup for implementation and techni-cal feedback. This is the phase atwhich the specialist group is responsi-ble for formally acquiring that experi-ence or at least defining theexpectations of implementation.

CS/TSG-696, “Candidate Standard:ATSC Automatic Transmitter PowerControl Data Return Link Standard,”provides the necessary specificationsto construct a Data Return Link (DRL)system for automatic transmitter powercontrol (ATPC) applications. The docu-ment further specifies the mechanismsnecessary for basic identification andpower control of TV Broadcast Auxil-iary Service (BAS) transmitters, in

either an automatic or man-ual mode. In addition, thenecessary mechanisms aredescribed to permit the car-riage of specialized privatedata (e.g., camera controlinformation and operatorcommunications) that areapplicable to remote fieldproduction.

CS/TSG-696 was ap-proved on May 10 and twomonths later an updated ver-sion, Revision A, was pub-lished that adds the means touniquely identify TV BAStransmitters.

About DRLIn the 10 November 2003ET Docket 95-18 Third Report andOrder, the FCC adopted a suggestionof the Society of Broadcast Engineersto create two 500-kHz wide datareturn link (DRL) bands at the lowerand upper edges of the re-farmed2,025–2,110 MHz TV Broadcast Auxil-iary Service band. A total of forty 25-kHz wide DRL channels were created,twenty in the lower DRL band, andtwenty in the upper DRL band. (SeeTable 1.) These channels may be usedto support important new applicationsrelating to remote station operations.

The DRL channels permit a “feed-

back” or “return” link to be estab-lished from an ENG receive only(ENG-RO) site to an originating TVpickup station (i.e., an ENG truck).This link allows automatic transmitterpower control by ENG trucks, andmore efficient usage of the seven 2GHz TV BAS channels. ATPC is theapplication addressed by CS/TSG-696.

Complimentary applications relatingto remote production, such as cameracontrol and operator communications,are also envisioned but are not includedin this standard. It is important to notethat “return” as used here is not limited

Table 1 DRL Channel Assignments


to signals going from the receive site tothe remote location. The data might alsogo the other way. As such, the channelscould also be used for two-way datacommunications, camera intercom, con-trol functions, and so on.

The ATPC ApplicationBecause the ET 95-18 Report andOrder did not adopt technical or oper-ating rules for DRL channels, therewas, accordingly, a need for theappropriate technical specifications tobe developed. Elements addressed byCS/TSG-696 relating to ATPC include:• Basic system parameters; e.g., mod-

ulation type, occupied bandwidth,radiated power, emission mask,and frequency stability.

• Protocols and signaling. Establishedcommunications protocols are usedwhere possible.

• Operational issues; e.g., data trans-mitted, priority of messages, andstation identification.With proper implementation of a

DRL ATPC system, only the necessaryamount of ENG output power is uti-lized to achieve reliable transmission.This facilitates more efficient use ofthe current ENG spectrum by minimiz-ing the likelihood of interferenceamong users in a given market orgeographic location. It should benoted that any location may becomefrequency-congested in response to amajor news or sporting event.

It is important to emphasize that theapplications for DRL systems extendbeyond strictly news events. Relatedand complimentary applications includecoverage of sporting events (e.g., golftournaments and motor races) andremote field production (e.g., paradesand political conventions).

About CS/TSG-696The DRL system described in CS/TSG-696 is intended to serve as a 2 GHzmicrowave return link from the ENG

central receive site to the ENG truckin the field. The link is used to supplyreturn power control metrics andother applicable information vital forremote ENG communications. TheDRL system is also intended to facili-tate various applications useful forremote field production, which maybe specified in a future revision of thedocument or left to individual usersand/or vendors to develop.

For the ATPC application, the DRL sys-tem consists of a 2 GHz DRL microwavetransmitter and antenna situated highatop the central receive site or any othermicrowave-friendly environment. Themicrowave transmitter is supplied DCand control information via a specifiedcable interface. A 2 GHz DRL receiver isutilized at the ENG truck, which inter-faces with the ENG transmitter.

DRL System Control MetricsIf an ENG truck (or other ENG plat-form) is equipped with a DRL receivingsystem, the DRL receiver will typicallyinterface to the ENG transmitter toallow for ATPC by the ENG truck trans-mitter. Such ATPC is especially impor-tant in congested ENG markets, wheresplit-channel operation using COFDMsignals with 6-MHz wide pedestals aremost likely to be used, in order toincrease the effective channel capacityfrom seven to fourteen channels.

For split-channel operation, it isparticularly important that the desired-to-undesired (D/U) signal ratiobetween the two incoming signals beclose to zero dB. If one originatingENG truck is close to an ENG receive-only site, but the other truck is not,the DRL signal can be used to reducethe transmitter power of the close-intruck so as to match the received car-rier level (RCL) of the COFDM signalfrom the distant ENG truck.

This balancing of RCLs applies to botha single ENG-RO site, where two split-channel COFDM signals are attempting to

simultaneously feed a single site, and toseparate but nearby ENG-RO sites of twodifferent TV stations. In congested TVmarkets, it is to the mutual advantage ofeven competing TV stations to cooperateon the technical operations of theirrespective ENG operations, especiallywhen adjacent home-channel frequencyassignments are involved. Figures 1 and 2demonstrate this concept.

Participate in the WorkThe DRL Candidate Standard is availablefor download at no cost from the ATSCWeb site (http://www.atsc.org/stan-dards/cs_documents/CS-TSG-696r1.pdf.)Comments are invited from all parties([email protected]). The docu-ment is will be considered for ballotingas a Proposed Standard (the next step inthe approval process) at the December13 ATSC Technology and StandardsGroup meeting. Comments should besubmitted before that date.


Figure 1 ENG-RO site without ATPC viaDRL.

Figure 1 ENG-RO site without ATPC viaDRL.


Christmas Eve, 2006 is a very specialdate. According to many accounts, itmarks the 100th anniversary of broad-casting. On that cold winter night, Regi-nald Fessenden, CE and COO of theNational Electric Signalling Company,spun up a high speed alternator in hisBrant Rock, Mass. laboratory until it wasproducing a carrier of approximately 70KHz. He amplitude modulated this sig-nal by simply connecting a carbonmicrophone in series with the antennafeeder. At the appointed time, Fes-senden presented a special programconsisting of recorded and live music,as well as a scripture reading celebrat-ing the birth of Christ. At the conclusionof the transmission, he advised his lis-teners (ship and shore radiotelegraphstation operators) that he would broad-cast again in one week.

History had been made!Broadcasting had been born!I first discovered this account in the

1960s. Earlier this year, I accepted afreelance writing assignment to produceas story commemorating the events ofDecember 24, 1906. Wanting to capturethe event and setting as closely as pos-sible, I embarked on a five month questto learn as much about it and Fes-senden as I could. The results of myresearch surprised even me.

First off, virtually every accountingof the event cites a biography of Fes-senden published in 1940 by hiswidow, some eight years after hisdeath. I wanted to read other accountsto try and get a better perspective ofwhat led up to this seminal broadcastand also of the technology that made itpossible. I was also curious to learnwhy Fessenden’s relative success didn’tproduce a fairly quick rollout of broad-casting to the public. As we know, thisdid not happen until the early 1920s.

After months of reading and re-reading letters, memos, yellowed mag-azine and newspaper pages, and avery interesting log book kept by anearly “amateur radio” enthusiast, I haveconcluded that the December 24th

broadcast most likely did not happen!I’d like to share some of my find-

ings. (A more complete accounting ofmy efforts appears in the October 25,2006 issue of Radio World.)

First, I was not able to unearth anynewspaper accounts of the event,which in itself was unusual. Fessendenthrived on publicity and was a veryfrequent contributor to both academicand popular publications. Fessenden’sBrant Rock, Mass. Laboratory is onlyabout 40 miles from Boston, so itwould have been very easy to havesummoned both a reporter and a pho-tographer to document this event.

It’s also curious that there appearsto be no mention of the Christmas Evebroadcast anywhere before early1932,and no complete published record of ituntil 1940 and the posthumous biogra-phy—“Fessenden: Builder of Tomor-rows” by his widow, Helen Fessenden.

As the capture of speech and musicby radio receivers that heretofore onlyreproduced the buzzes and clicks oftelegraphic code must have been veryexciting for both shipboard radioroom operators and their shore station

counterparts, a lot of ink must havebeen applied to the pages of logbooks that particular evening. Unfortu-nately this can’t be proved or dis-proved as a search for the radio logbooks from U.S. Naval vessels of thatera revealed that apparently nonewere preserved. Only a single surviv-ing contemporary radio log book waslocated. It was kept by one FrancisHart who lived in Sayville, N.Y., about160 airline miles from Brant Rock.

Not too much is known about Hart,but from perusing the log book a fewconclusions can be drawn—he knewradio and was interested in it; he wasproficient at copying code; and he hadquite a bit of time on his hands to pur-sue his hobby of listening in on what-ever radio communications he couldsnare from his Sayville receive site.

The log is in the form of a commer-cial journal with sewn-in pages. Itbegins in September of 1906 and con-tinues into October of 1909. Hart start-ed each “listening” day with a rubberdate stamp. Early in the log, he devot-ed several pages to listing “call identi-fiers” of various U.S. Naval vessels, as


A Fresh Look at Fessenden’s 1906 BroadcastBy James E. O’Neal

Early high frequency alternator used by Fessenden and possibly used for theDecember 21, 1906 telephony demonstration. The ordinary twisted pair wire atthe bottom left of the photograph appears to be used as an RF transmission line.

Photo courtesy of North Carolina State Archives.


well as those of known Marconi, Unit-ed Fruit Company and De Forest.There was no FCC or even FederalRadio Commission then, so there werereally no assigned station calls. Every-one operating used a two letter desig-nation. Fessenden’s Brant Rock stationused “BO” which might have stoodfor “Brant on the Ocean.”

Hart usually logged ship-to-shoreand other traffic in his journal with justa listing of the identifiers of the two sta-tions involved in the QSO (contact).Only rarely did he disclose details of theradio conversations intercepted. Theexceptions are in themselves interesting.On one occasion, he records that a shipsome distance from New York hasradioed in to see if there has been averdict in the much celebrated “Thaw”murder trial. Occasionally he commentson the weather or radio propagationconditions. He discusses upgrades to hisstation—an addition in 1907 of thenewly invented crystal detector.

According to all published accountsof Fessenden’s accomplishment, hewent on the air in code a few daysbefore Christmas Eve with a generalcall to anyone listening, andannounced that he would be doingsomething special on Christmas Eve –transmitting speech and music.

With Hart’s logbook at hand, veri-fying the Fessenden Christmas Evestory should have been easy.

I checked listings for a week or soprior to Christmas—nothing out of theordinary.

Well, Hart was only human. Perhapswhen Fessenden was transmitting hisadvisory, Hart was eating or napping.Even so, a message of this nature—speech and music through the ether—isbound to have caused a considerable stiramong those that did have headphonesin place. The “buzz” in its aftermathwould have been slightly less than fierce.

“Didja hear that—speech and musicon Christmas Eve—pass it on!!!”

However, there is no logging ofany such “buzz.”

The same is true for Christmas Eve.Only two QSOs are logged and nei-ther involves Brant Rock.

If Fessenden had conducted hisbroadcast, it stands to reason that thepost-showtime buzz also would havebeen tremendous, probably going onwell into Christmas Day and beyond.

“Hey, were you listening last night?That fella Fessenden or whatever hisname was playing music and talkingon the air!!!”

But again, Hart’s log contains nosuch entries. Traffic logged that week,on New Year’s Eve, and on into Janu-ary of 1907 reveals nothing unusual atall from any source.

A very valid question at this point iswhy would Fessenden have been in aposition to attempt such a broadcast?

A few years before, he entered intopartnership with two Pittsburgh busi-nessmen to establish a telecommunica-tions business—the National ElectricSignalling Company, or NESCO. At thetime, the only way to move telegraphictraffic across the Atlantic was via under-sea cables. (Guglielmo Marconi claimedto have linked the North American con-tinent with Europe in 1901, but in 1905-1906 did not have any sort of regularmessage handling service in place.)

Fessenden constructed the BrantRock station and an identical one atMachrihanish, Scotland and by late1906, the stations were communicat-ing with each other.

Just at about the time that Fes-senden and his business partnersmight have started to see a return oninvestment, a strong storm, aided byshoddy guy line work, took down the420-foot tall antenna at Machrihanish.The date was Dec. 6, 1906.

At this point, one has to wonderwhat occupied Fessenden’s thoughtsmore—preparing for a Christmas Evebroadcast or trying to come up withanother business model for his compa-ny? (The Machrihanish station wasnever rebuilt. Employees were termi-nated and the equipment was sold off.)

The records show that Fessendenapparently was somewhat morefocused on the future of NESCO, foron Dec. 11, he issued invitations toengineering personnel at Bell Tele-phone, Western Electric, General Elec-

tric, academics, and the press, toattend a demonstration of radiotele-phony at Brant Rock on Dec. 21.

The Dec. 21 event is well docu-mented and involved transmission ofspeech and music between Brant Rockand another NESCO station at Ply-mouth, Mass., some 11 miles distant.

Fessenden was attempting to sellthe telephone company on usingradiotelephony to extend the telcoreach, as it did not require acquisitionof rights of way or the stringing ofwires. Fessenden even coupled hisradio transmissions into the telephonelines with a special “relay” (hybrid)that he had designed.

Apparently the demonstration wasvery successful. So much so, that Fes-senden penned an article describing itfor Scientific American, which waspublished the next month.

His Scientific American description ofthe Dec. 21 event was detailed and con-tained pictures of the apparatus used.

Strangely, there is absolutely nomention of the Christmas Eve broad-cast, even thought it “occurred” onlythree days after the demonstration.

Later, Fessenden wrote up a sum-mary of all of his wireless telephonywork to date. This was published inseveral places, including the AIEETransactions and The Annual Reportto the Smithsonian (1908). Theaccount, as published in the Smithson-ian volume, spans more than 40 pagesand includes numerous pictures. TheDec. 21 demonstration is well docu-mented therein. However, there is noword whatsoever about a ChristmasEve or New Year’s Eve broadcast.

There is little evidence that NESCOmade any money for Fessenden’sbackers and in 1910 he was terminat-ed. For most of the next decade and ahalf, Fessenden was occupied in legalchallenges to collect money for use ofhis patents by NESCO and later West-inghouse and RCA.

Among the rather large amount ofFessenden items at the North CarolinaState Archives in Raleigh is a personalscrapbook of newspaper clippings.There are three clippings that call



attention to his early work in transmit-ting speech and music. None mentiona Christmas Eve broadcast and all fixthe date of his first attempt at broad-casting as sometime in 1907.

There are no clippings of any “let-ters to the editor” by Fessenden torebut the date or circumstancesdescribed in the clippings.

Fessenden authored a series of articlesfor Hugo Gernsback’s Radio News in1925. The series was entitled “My Inven-tions.” In the first installment, Fessendenprepared a “box” with “bullets” listingsome of the accomplishments of whichhe was most proud. In the number fiveposition is a listing for “wave chute” (hisname for what became a counterpoise orground plane). Sharing the number fiveposition is “first radio broadcast 1907.”

There is no discussion of the radiobroadcast in the text of that article.

Gernsback ran a series of biograph-ical articles on Lee De Forest concur-rently with the Fessenden series. Inthe June issue of the magazine, DeForest states that he did the firstbroadcast of speech and music inearly 1907 from a “studio” in the NewYork City area. (This is also mentionedin De Forest’s autobiography, pub-lished years later.)

Interestingly, Francis Hart’s log bookbears an entry on March 20, 1907 thathe was receiving speech and musicfrom De Forest’s NYC station. This isthe first of several loggings that Hartwould make in the coming months ofthe reception of speech and music.

Looking at the situation from anoth-er perspective, if the histories are cor-rect and Fessenden actually did the1906 broadcast, then the year 1931would mark the 25th anniversary of theevent. Radio was big business all overthe world by that time and the eventcertainly should have been commemo-rated by the press. However, a searchof radio related periodicals in this timeframe turned up no mention at all.

A trade magazine that exists to thisday was born in October of 1931. Thatpublication was Broadcasting (nowBroadcasting & Cable). Since its incep-tion, the magazine has always beenknown for its thorough coverage of

broadcasting-related news and events.Two issues were published in Decem-ber 1931. Neither contains a singleword about Fessenden. Curiously, thesecond December issue contains afairly lengthy article about Marconi.

So where did the information aboutthe Christmas Eve 1906 broadcastcome from?

In a collection of letters at theSmithsonian, there is one from Fes-senden dated January 29 1932. It isaddressed to S.A. Kintner, a formerassociate of Fessenden and at thetime, a VP at Westinghouse.

Fessenden’s letter was apparentlywritten in response to an inquiry fromKintner regarding Fessenden’s earlywork in radiotelephony and broadcast-ing. This is an excerpt from that letter:

“…the program sent out ChristmasEve and New Year’s Eve, 1906 wouldbe the first broadcast. This broadcastbeing advertised and notified threedays in advance of Christmas, theword being telegraphed to the shipsof the U.S. Navy and the United FruitCo., which were equipped with ourapparatus that we intended broadcast-ing speech, music and singing onChristmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.”

The program on Christmas Eve was asfollows: first a short speech by me sayingwhat we were going to do, then somephonograph music. You will find a pho-tograph showing the phonograph usedin the article in the Transactions of theAmerican Institute above referred to andalso in the American Telephone Journal,the music on the phonograph beingHandel’s “Largo. Then came a violin soloby me, being a composition by Gounodcalled “O, Holy Night”, and ending upwith the words “Adore and be still”which I sang one verse of, in addition toplaying the violin, though the singing, ofcourse was not very good. Then camethe Bible text, “Glory to God in the high-est and on earth peace to men of goodwill”, and we finally wound up by wish-ing them a Merry Christmas and thensaying that we proposed to broadcastagain New Year’s Eve.

The Broadcast on New Year’s Evewas the same as before, except that themusic was changed and I got someone

else to sing. I had not picked myself todo the singing, but on Christmas Eve Icould not get any of the other (sic) toeither talk, sing of (sic) play and conse-quently had to do it all myself.

Fessenden died approximately sixmonths later on July 22, 1932. Some-time thereafter, his widow, Helen,lightly edited those paragraphs fromthe letter and included them in herhusband’s biography.

In truth, the Christmas Eve broad-cast story is a beautiful thing. I hadbelieved it for 40 years without anyqualifications until I started myresearch earlier this year. I still wouldlike to believe it, as on the surface it isa great story and provides a spring-board for the whole institution of radiobroadcasting. However, without hardevidence to support it, Fessenden’sclaim seems to be rather dubious..

Fessenden was truly a great individ-ual. He patented some 500 inventionsand did pioneering work in manyareas. He invented the heterodyneprinciple of electrical signals longbefore Armstrong and even coined thework “heterodyne.”

He may well have been the firstperson to transmit speech via radioand there is no disputing the fact thathe had the technology available to so,and that he did do so on December21, 1906. However, in light of theinformation available, crediting himwith the Christmas Eve broadcast isnot easily done.

I would ask that if anyone readingthis has any hard evidence to the con-trary, he or she should make it public.For detailed information, please see theOctober 25, 2006 issue of Radio Worldon the web at: http://www.radioworld.com/pages/s.0052/t.437.html

James O’Neal graduated from theUniversity of Arkansas. He retired in2005 from the Voice of America withmore than 36 years of experience inbroadcasting. He is now TechnologyEditor for TV Technology Magazine.Mr. O’Neal holds an Extra ClassRadio Amateur License (AG4DH)and is a member of the IEEE, BTS,SMPTE and SBE.




The device that heralded the beginningof the 20th century electronics industryfirst saw the light of day in late 1906.This was the triode electron tube, oraudion, as its inventor called it.

To those of us who lived andworked with vacuum tubes at leastsome time during our careers, Lee deForest’s invention seems both simpleand obvious: a glowing metal filament(cathode) provides a source of elec-trons that are attracted to a positivelycharged plate or anode (de Forest ini-tially called it a “wing”). Interposedbetween the cathode and anode struc-tures is a “less than solid” grid. (Thegrid in the original tube was simply apiece of wire bent back and forth in azigzag manner. It later evolved into amore efficient helix of wire surround-ing the filament or cathode.)

By varying the voltage on the grid,the stream of electrons being drawn tothe anode is modulated. A small gridvoltage can effect an appreciablechange in a plate circuit load resistorand the voltage developed across it. Itamplifies!

Simple!However, it took a patent lawsuit toforce its invention, five to six addition-al years to turn it into a practicaldevice, the work of another fabledengineer to explain its workings, andseveral legal skirmishes to clear thepath for its commercial use.

The concept of the electron tubegoes back quite a bit before de Forest.Geissler tubes, Crookes tubes, Lenardtubes, x-ray tubes, early cathode raytubes, and others all involved sealingmetal electrodes into a glass envelopeor tube and removing a certainamount of air from the space inside.

It Began with EdisonThomas Edison must be given creditfor the creation of the “hot cathode”tube—he sealed a metal plate insideone of his electric lamps and noted a

unidirectional flow of current whenthe lamp’s filament incandesced. Hereceived a patent on this “Edisoneffect,” but did not try to commercial-ize it, or spend much time in trying tounderstand what was happening.

Later, a British scientist, JohnAmbrose Fleming decided to try it outas a detector of radio frequency ener-gy and learned that it worked verywell for that purpose. He dubbed itthe “oscillation valve” and received apatent on his discovery. (Electrontubes have always been known asvalves in England.)

Enter Lee de ForestAfter graduating from Yale’s SheffieldScientific School in 1899, de Forest hadhoped to work in Nikola Tesla’s labo-ratory, but received no offer. Instead,he moved through a series of low pay-ing introductory positions in the fieldof telephony and wireless beforemeeting a less-than-honest stock pro-moter, Abraham White. In a very shorttime, White had incorporated the deForest Wireless Telegraph Company inNew Jersey, with himself as presidentand with young de Forest serving asvice president and scientific director.

In truth, White was much more

interested in making money than fur-thering the state of the art of wirelesscommunications, but had to havesomething to show potential investors,so a number of wireless telegraph sta-tions were constructed in the EasternUnited States. The company set up aparticularly impressive display of wire-less at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.

Reginald FessendenMany problems beset the operation ofthe de Forest Wireless TelegraphCompany. Among these was legalaction taken by Reginald Fessendenover de Forest’s unauthorized use ofFessenden’s electrolytic detector. In1906, after three years in the courts,Fessenden was awarded a judgmentand effectively put the de Forest com-pany out of business. White was quickto reorganize under another name andtransfer assets, so as to deny Fes-senden the monetary penalty the courtassessed. There was no place for deForest in this new venture; he was ter-minated with a very small amount ofseverance pay and a solitary inventionhe’d been working on that Whitebelieved to be worthless. This was adetector of radio waves that did notinfringe on Fessenden’s device.

Exactly how de Forest arrived at hisidea for a detector is a matter of con-jecture. As mentioned, Edison had dis-covered that a negative charge couldmove through the empty space in hisspecially constructed electric lamp.Later, Fleming adapted this principleto demodulate RF energy and pub-lished his findings in 1905.

With Fessenden’s lawsuit looming,It is to be imagined that de Forestquickly began searching for othertechnology to replace that crucial (andborrowed) part of the radio system hewas using.

By his accounting, de Forest hadfirst tried detecting radio signals byplacing electrodes in an open gasflame. While this worked, the detector

100th Anniversary of the Vacuum TubeBy James E. O’Neal

An early de Forest audion (from O’Neal Collection)


was only as stable as the air currentsaround it and could not be trans-formed into a commercial device.

It could be assumed that de Forestmade the crucial “jump” in his road toinvention by replacing the gas flamewith an electrical one, sealed within aglass shell.

Enter Henry McCandlessIt is reported that in the fall of 1906,Henry McCandless, a New York Citymanufacturer of small electric lampbulbs, was approached by an assistantof de Forest’s and asked to fabricatewhat amounted to a Fleming valve.

In a matter of weeks, de Forestunveiled his latest development at ameeting of the American Institute ofElectrical Engineers (AIEE) in NewYork City. The date was October 26,1906. De Forest used the word“audion” to describe this new detector.

At this point in time, it appears thatde Forest had merely reverse engi-neered yet another invention.

However, within the month, heenhanced the oscillation valve oraudion into something unique andpatentable.

How de Forest came upon the ideathat jumpstarted the electronics indus-try will probably never be known withcertainty. Why he did it may be clearin light of the audion’s closeness toFleming’s valve.

De Forest had experimented withusing multiple electrodes in his flamedetector experiments. Perhaps thiswas the genesis of his invention. Per-haps not.

He had also been experimentingwith the use of a battery, or batteries,in connection with the Fleming diode.Perhaps he was curious about whatwould happen if he used multipleelectrodes as he had done in the flamedetector. Perhaps he just wanted tomake it appear to be something otherthan a direct knock-off of Fleming’sdevice. His exact reasons will neverbe known.

During that November, in anattempt to either replicate his workwith the flame detector, or possibly to

make his device different from Flem-ing’s, de Forest sought a patent on adevice that consisted of a filament, ananode, and a control electrode of sorts(not a grid). Such a tube could nothave provided de Forest with any use-ful gain. (However, years later, thisprinciple of “gridless control” was suc-cessfully adopted by Heintz & Kauf-man Ltd. and was the basis for their“Gammatron” tubes.)

De Forest kept up his experimenta-tion and on November 25, 1906, hehad McCandless incorporate a gridstructure into the experimental lampdevices he’d been ordering.

Stroke of Genius?Was it a stroke of genius, or just aplodding attempt to avoid infringe-ment on Fleming’s detector?

It doesn’t really matter. This wasthat bit of tinkering, experimentation,innovating, developmental engineer-ing, or just plain luck that put de For-est over the top.

This was that one small step thatimmortalized de Forest and placedhim among the top inventors of the20th century.

Instead of merely detecting, theaddition of the third element allowedthe audion to amplify. If it couldamplify, then it could oscillate. Thepossibilities for the new deviceappeared to be nearly limitless.

However, all of this was to comesomewhat later. At the end of 1906,the audion was far from perfect andde Forest was woefully ignorant as tohow it worked. This is so stated in hispatent application.

He assumed that ionized gas wassomehow involved in moving chargesthrough space, hence the nameaud–ion. In fact, he rationalized that iftoo great a vacuum were to be createdin processing the audion, the tubecould not work.

This resulted in the audions pro-duced by McCandless being quitegassy and of limited use. (The chiefcustomers were radio amateurs, andthe early tubes sold for $5.00) If morethan a few tens of volts were applied

to the wing (plate), then the residualgas would ionize and render the tubeuseless until the potential wasremoved.

Also, carbon and/or pure tungsten arenot the most copious electron emittersand early adopters of de Forest’s triodewould frequently burn out the filamentin their efforts to squeeze more perform-ance from the little amplifier, resulting inproduct returns to McCandless.

For this and other reasons, McCan-dless was not that excited about man-ufacturing audions for de Forest, butcontinued to do so for some time. Hewas in part responsible for severalchanges and improvements to theaudion over the next several years.

It took Edwin H. Armstrong to fullyanalyze the operation of the de Forestaudion and put forth the correct theo-ry of its operation.

De Forest eventually sold rights tohis invention. Engineers and scien-tists at both Western Electric andGeneral Electric “took it from there”and shaped the primitive little deviceinto the workhorse that drove theradio, recording, television, comput-ing and numerous other industriesuntil the invention of the transistorbegan to eclipse it more than 50years later.

De Forest was honored in 1922with the Institute of Radio Engineer’sMedal of Honor in recognition of hisinvention and other work in the fieldof radio.

Later in his life, de Forest served aterm as president of the IRE (1930)and in 1946 received the AIEE’s Edi-son Medal for his development of thevacuum tube.

Although de Forest died at the ageof 87 in 1961, his invention lives on tothis day. Even though the vacuumtube is officially 100 years old now, ithas not been completely forgotten andpushed out of the way. Several com-panies throughout the world still man-ufacture tubes and many audiophilesclaim that tube technology is the onlyway with which to reproduce highquality audio.

Happy 100th birthday!




Japan IEEE BTS Chapter ReportBy Keiichi Kubota, NHK, Japan Broadcasting Corp., Japan.

BTS Japan Chapter had two jointmeetings with the Institute of ImageInformation and Television Engi-neers (ITE) during the second halfof 2006.

On July 28 to 29, 2006 at Hokkai-do Univers i ty , Sapporo, Japan.There were 13 technical presenta-tions on transmission technologiesfor digital terrestrial broadcastingand general topics for broadcastingtechnology and one special topicfor emergency warning broadcast-ing system.

On October 3, 2006 in Tohoku Uni-versity, Sendai, Japan. There were 4technical presentations on digital

broadcasting technology and one spe-cial topic for universal communication.

BTS Japan Chapter is planning tohave three joint meetings with theInstitute of Image Information andTelevision Engineers (ITE).• On January 16 to 17, 2007 in

Kumamoto University, Kumamoto,Japan.

• On February, 2007 in NHK Hiroshi-ma Station, Hiroshima, Japan.

• On February 23-24, 2007 in Kyuka-village Minami-izu, Shizuoka,Japan.

Taipei IEEE Broadcast Technology Society ChapterReportBy Ying Li, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan

The Eleventh Cross-Strait Radio Tech-nology Seminar, jointly sponsored bythe China Radio Association, IEEE BTSTaipei, Yuan Ze University and TatungUniversity in Taiwan, and the Electron-ics Society of Hunan was held on Sep-tember 9th and 10th at Changsha,Hunan, China with the joint efforts ofparticipants from both sides of the Tai-wan Strait. The attendees, a group ofover forty from Taipei and over sixtyfrom Hunan, including students, teach-

ers, engineers and government offi-cials. Speeches were given on varioustopics of current status and futuretrends. Hunan currently has 85% radioand 93% television coverage, is 16th insoftware and 8th in IC industries inChina. Changsha’s Lu Valley industrialpark is rapidly developing, gaining aleading position in central China. Rep-resentatives from Hunan Universitygave speeches on wireless sensor net-work design and implementation.

Representatives from Taiwan gavespeeches on the future of internettelephony, electromagnetic field analy-sis for cell phones, channel modelingand system deployment for mobilephone systems (cell phone penetrationrate in Taiwan is over 100%).

The after seminar tour included avisit to the Lu Valley industrial park(we visited San-yi heavy machinery,San-chen motion pictures) and a visitto the spectacular Zhanjiajie.

Attendees of the Seminar include theDeputy Governor of Hunan and other

officials.

Attendees from Academia (fouruniversities) and Industries, including

six BTS, Taipei members.

Zhangjiajie is well known for itsspectacular scenery. A broadcasting

station on top of Tienmenshan with sixmicrowave antennas and an eightyeight meter tower is maintained byfourteen hardworking engineers.



Report of the IEEE Joint BT/CE/COM RussiaNorthwest (St.Petersburg) Chapter By Dmitry Tkachenko, St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University, Russia

A technical meeting of the RussiaNorthwest BT/CE/COM Chapter washeld at the MART Company inSt.Petersburg on 10 November 2006.The meeting focused on a discussionof current issues related to develop-ment of digital TV and radio broad-casting technologies in Russia and adiscussion about the results of recentinternational conferences ISCE 2006and IBC 2006.

Dr. Alexander Artamonov, DeputyDirector of the MART Company, whotraditionally plays a key role in organ-izing Chapter meetings, opened themeeting by presenting an overview ofthe current situation concerning ter-restrial digital TV and radio broadcast-ing in Russia. Three digital terrestrialTV channels are operational now inSt.Petersburg and terrestrial DTVbroadcasting is now available in someregions of Russia. The GovernmentCommission headed by the FirstDeputy Prime Minister of the RussianFederation, Dmitry Medvedev, wasestablished in Russia to develop astrategy and concepts for introductionof digital TV in Russia. Two possibleapproaches are being considered; onebased on governmental support for atransition to digital TV and the other isbased on possible investments fromprivate business. In either case it isexpected that a basic social DTVpackage consisting of several majorchannels should be delivered to TVviewers free of charge. No clear busi-ness motivation exists for terrestrialbroadcasters to start DTV broadcastingbecause the Russian population isused to receiving many free analog TVterrestrial channels. The introductionof digital terrestrial channels with paidsubscriptions does not attract seriousinterest from customers. On the otherhand, the participants at this meetingobserved that penetration of digital TVcable networks is growing in Russia

and that commercial IPTV projects arealso available for providing receptionof interactive TV programs via ADSLmodems or appropriate set top boxes.

In the field of digital radio broad-casting Alexander Artamonov pro-posed to focus more effort on thedevelopment of equipment for DRMbroadcasting. At this time a pilot DRMbroadcast is on air in three Russiancities in both short wave and mediumwave frequencies. At these sites theDRM signal is produced by equip-ment manufactured by the ThalesCompany with final amplification pro-vided by existing Russian transmittersadjusted for the DRM broadcastingmode. The goal of the current DRMtest broadcasts is to identify the areaswhich have clear reception of theDRM signal and to measure thereceived signal quality in each area.The Chapter meeting participantsagreed that the issues related to DRMbroadcasting are of practical interestat this time. They decided to continuediscussing these issues at the nextChapter meeting.

The Department Head of the St.Petersburg State Research Institute ofTelevision, Dr. Lev Balanin, gave apresentation describing the Multi-functional Digital TV Complex devel-oped and manufactured by theInstitute. It includes a vehicle-basedTV studio and a capability for trans-mitt ing the TV signal to centralbroadcast facilities. All connectionswithin modules are based on serialdigital interfaces (SDI). The outputsignal can be configured to be in aPAL or SECAM analog format or in anMPEG-2 transport stream digital for-mat. Possible usage of MPEG-4 AVCcompression is also being consideredfor the future. Transmission equip-ment for satellite uplink or radiorelay microwave link is available in aseparate vehicle.

The second part of the meetingwas devoted to a discussion concern-ing recent international conferences.Prof. Konstantin Glasman brieflydescribed the results of InternationalSymposium on Consumer ElectronicsISCE 2006 held in St.Petersburg insummer 2006 (see the report on thissymposium in the Fall 2006 issue ofthe BTS Newsletter). He also reportedon the main technology trends heobserved during his recent visit to theIBC 2006 conference held in Amster-dam during September 2006. Konstan-tin Glasman noted three main themesat the IBC 2006 conference. They are(1) HDTV, (2) IPTV and (3) mobileTV. He described in detail the maintechnical developments discussed atthe IBC conference for each of thesetechnical areas.

At the conclusion of the meeting,the Chapter Chair, Dmitry Tkachenko,reminded Chapter members to submittheir 2007 IEEE Membership Renewalson time as well as to possibly recruitnew IEEE and BTS members. Themeeting participants were verypleased to know that the Fall issue ofBTS Newsletter contains an articlewith congratulations to AlexanderArtamonov who celebrated his 70thbirthday on July 1, 2006.

The meeting was followed by aChapter sponsored dinner. During thedinner the participants mentioned the75th anniversary of TV broadcasting inRussia which is officially being cele-brated in Russia now with a series ofcorresponding events for TV profes-sionals. Regular TV broadcasting inRussia based on an optic-mechanicalTV system was launched in 1931. Itwas followed a few years later byelectronic TV broadcasting. During thedinner the members of the Chapterhad personal discussions on varioustechnical and professional issues relat-ed to broadcasting.



The ITU-T IPTV Focus Group Second Meeting by Wei LI, Communications Research Center, Canada

The second meeting of IPTV focusgroup (FG IPTV) was held by ITU-T inBusan, Korea from Oct. 16 to 20, 2006.This meeting attracted more than 200participants from most of the world’sleading telecom equipment manufac-tures (including Alcatel, Lucent, Nortel,Motorola, Samsung, Cisco, etc.), tele-com service providers (France Telecom,Korean Telecom, China Telecom, NTT,etc.) and other organizations workingin the field of IPTV (ETRI of Korea,ATIS, RNIB of UK, ITU-T SG (StudyGroup) 13 for Next Generation Net-works, CATR, DTI, etc.). More than 150contributions were received prior to themeeting. Their distribution is as follows:• WG 1 (Architecture and

Requirements): 104• WG 2 (QoS and Performance

Aspects): 15• WG 3 (Service Security and

Contents Protection): 15• WG 4 (IPTV Network Control): 16• WG 5 (End Systems and

Interoperability Aspects): 10• WG 6 (Middleware, Application

and Content Platforms): 13Some contributions addressed

issues of more than one workinggroup. They were processed simulta-neously by corresponding workinggroups. This situation is counted inthe above statistics.

19 incoming liaison documentswere also addressed by relevant work-ing groups.

The leadership team of this meet-ing was as follows:Chairman: Mr. Ghassem KOLEYNI(Nortel Networks)Vice-Chairmen: • Mr. Simon JONES (BT)• Mr. Chae-Sub LEE (ETRI)• Ms. Duo LIU (China Academy of

Telecommunication Research, MII)WG 1: Architecture and Requirements• Mr. Junkyun CHOI (Information

and Communications University)• Mr. Christian JACQUENET (France

Telecom)

• Mr. Julien MAISONNEUVE (Alcatel)WG 2: QoS and Performance Aspects• Mr. Paul COVERDALE (Huawei)• Mr. Juergen HEILES (Siemens) WG 3: Service Security and ContentsProtection• Mr. Dong WANG (ZTE)• Ms. Catherine PERGUE (Dell)• Mr. Glenn ADAMS (Samsung Elec-

tronics)WG 4: IPTV Network Control• Mr. Daegun KIM (KT)WG 5: End Systems and Interoperabil-ity Aspects• Mr. Yan CHEN (China Telecom)• Mr. Gale LIGHTFOOT (Cisco)• Mr. Yoshinori GOTO (NTT)WG 6: Middleware, Application andContent Platforms• Mr. Masahito KAWAMORI (NTT)• Mr. Charles SANDBANK (DTI)

During the five-day meeting, eachworking group worked separately ontheir own mandates. Due to theuneven distribution of the contributingdocuments, the work load of differentgroups varied very much. The Archi-tecture and Requirements workinggroup (WG 1) had to work very hardto fulfill its mandates. WG 1, with themost numerous participants (usuallymore than 150 people), had to workthe entire five days and most eveningsuntil late night. Other working groupswere relatively relaxed and they werenot fully loaded every meeting sessionduring this period.

I spent most of my time on WG 1and WG 2 activities.

WG 1 meetings spanned from Mon-day (Oct. 16) through Friday (Oct. 20)morning. Due to the heavy work load,evening sessions had to be scheduledfrom Tuesday to Thursday evenings.Contributing proposals responding tothe call for contributions of last FGmeeting can be classified into follow-ing categories:• Term of references including defi-

nition• Requirements of IPTV

• Architecture of IPTV• Service and scenario of IPTV

More issues, as defined in the lastmeeting were addressed, they include:• IPTV requirements: outstanding

issues on the requirements for IPTVservices contained in the living listwere further addressed. Specifically,the user requirements, network/serv-ice provider requirements, and con-tent provider requirements werediscussed. The alignments witharchitecture and service scenario forIPTV service were addressed. Toproduce relevant architecture andservice scenarios for IPTV service,specific requirements were definedat this meeting.

• IPTV architecture: populated theoutput documents, chiefly the archi-tecture document. Joint meetingswith other groups were held toalign the considered architectures.

• IPTV service/scenario: according tothe call for contributions of the lastmeeting, the following contribu-tions were processed:- The refined list and definition ofIPTV services

- Identified services grouping andclassification by importance, rele-vance, priority, etc. to identifyphases of work (possibly core set,additional services and rejectedservices)

- Work on requirements, use casesand service scenarios

WG 1 discussions have taken placeon three subgroups of requirements,architecture and service/scenario forthis meeting. The following are moredetailed observations on the WG 1activities.

Requirements of IPTVRequirements of IPTV describerequirements for the design, thedeployment and the operations ofIPTV services. IPTV service require-ments, accessibility requirements andQoS (Quality of Service) requirements


are some examples.Intensive discussions were carried

out on the IPTV service requirementsissues. Lucent (Input Document (ID)0254) and DTI (ID0109) suggestedadopting a quite mature requirementsdocument from ATIS to prevent re-investment. After discussion, it wasagreed that the ATIS documents willbe a basis to develop the output docu-ments on the requirements for IPTVservice as a starting point. Some itemsfrom ATIS were used directly to devel-op the output document.

ETRI proposed (ID0130) a remotecontent sharing service. The remotecontent consists of media content andremote UI (User Interface) content. Byeliminating proprietary software andhardware for playing digital contenton home-entertainment systems, theUPnP standard opens considerableopportunities for software and hard-ware developers. This is an interestingrequirement for the IPTV service. Itcould be further investigated to see ifit can be used in our actual mobile TVquality testing project. For this propos-al, content protection concerns wereraised.

ZTE proposed (ID0154) to bothWG 1 and WG 4 some multicast con-trol requirements, including channelzapping protocol, channel access con-trol and channel review capability, forbroadcast TV service in IPTV. Thesewere included into the output docu-ment with other control requirements.Other multicast related requirementsof IPTV can be seen in proposals suchas: The Requirement for the MulticastFeature of IPTV Bearer Network(ID0165, from ZTE), Requirements forOverlay Multicast based IPTV MediaDelivery System (ID0221, from ETRI),Proposed Requirements for interoper-ability amongst IPTV Multicast ServiceProviders (ID0136, from KT), etc.

One interesting proposal from ETRI(ID0189) suggested a minimal require-ment of H.264 stream for encapsula-tion of MPEG-2 TS (Transport Stream).It proposed a simple way to put tim-ing information in the H.264sequence, instead of using the MPEG-

2 PES-header to record the PTS (Pre-sentation Time Stamp) and DTS(Decode Time Stamp). By means ofthe proposed methodology, it is possi-ble that the packetization of MPEG-2TS into H.264 can be more effectivelyperformed.

During the output document prepa-ration stage, many discussions wereconcerned about the terminology ofgeneral requirements for IPTV, such asusing generic ‘content’ to avoid theterm ‘TV program’, using ‘audio’instead of ‘voice’, etc.

On the last day, a 65-page outputdocument was created for IPTVrequirements.

Architecture of IPTVThe architecture sessions of the Work-ing Group 1 worked on 27 submissions.

Based on contribution documents(ID0117, ID0118, ID0120 of Huawei,ID0209 of Nortel, ID0156 of ZTE,ID0230~0232 of NTT, ID0240 of Tele-comPolska), WG 1 concluded thatthree options are available for provid-ing IPTV services: NGN (Next Genera-tion Networks) IMS (IP MultimediaSubsystem)-based, NGN non IMS-based and non-NGN based. There wasagreement within the Focus Groupthat the first two options will be fullyaligned with the NGN architecturedefined by SG13 and provided in the

liaison statement. At this point, nopotential misalignment was detected.WG 1 will ensure that any require-ments relevant to the NGN work areliaised on time to SG13 so as toensure the work of the focus group isaligned with SG13.

With some modifications to a con-tribution document entitled: IPTVFunctional Architecture (ID0170, fromChina Telecom, MII), a high levelarchitecture of IPTV was included inthe output document. This architectureis shown in the diagram (Fig. 1)below:

Information across each referencepoint is listed as following:• A: Content Stream• B: Content Request, Descriptive

Metadata/Content Info etc.• C: Rights Management Interaction• G: Conditional Access System• D: Service Interaction Message • E: Content Location Info, Billing

Info., Content Control Command,etc.

• F1: Play Control Signal• F2: Content Stream

ZTE proposed (ID0156) an IMS-based architecture for IPTV. In thisproposal, IMS is selected as the coreservice component and supports manycapabilities to realize various servicesin NGN. By adding a new functionalentity in IMS, this document gives an


Fig. 1. High level architecture of IPTV


IMS-based IPTV architecture. Nortel’sproposal (ID0209) and TelecomPols-ka’s proposal (ID0240) also belong tothe IMS-based architecture.

Many proposals concerning theIPTV architecture introduced contro-versial diagrams which could causeconflicting meanings. It was suggestedthat these diagrams be simplified ordeleted. Replacing some lower leveldiagrams with higher level illustrationswas also suggested to clarify and facil-itate understanding.

The schedule was extremely tight.An appropriate review of the outputdocument was not accomplished.Some delegates complained about thelack of time. The chairman had towrite a note to defer the approval ofthis part until further discussions dur-ing the electronic meeting in Decem-ber this year.

Service and scenario of IPTVThe IPTV service and scenario identi-fies and defines IPTV services. TheIPTV services are classified and theirrequirements defined. User cases forIPTV services are also provided.

The service and scenario sessionsof the Working Group 1 worked on 25submissions.

Due to time restrictions, Serviceand Scenario of IPTV has little time toproduce any approved documents. Itwas suggested to resume its discus-sions during the May 2007 meeting,since the January 2007 meeting has afull schedule of materials to process.

On the last working day, WG 1 fin-ished producing seven output docu-ments. One liaison statement to SG13was also generated.

The QoS and Performance workinggroup (WG 2) worked during the first3.5 days by reviewing the assignmentof incoming documentation andincoming liaison documents, progress-ing on existing work items. Duringthis period, WG 2 finished generatingfour output documents:• QoE requirements for IPTV• Traffic management for IPTV• Application layer reliability solu-

tions for IPTV

• Performance monitoring for IPTVThe following are the major activi-

ties resulting from processing theexisting work items:

QoE requirements for IPTVProposed by Nortel (ID0210) and afterdiscussion, an agreement was reachedtowards the QoE (Quality of Experi-ence) dimension model as shown inthe following diagram (Fig. 2).

Differing from some other viewpoints, QoE is regarded as the overallacceptability of an application or serv-ice. It includes the complete end-to-endsystem effects (client, terminal, net-work, services infrastructure, etc) andmay be influenced by user expectationsand context. Hence the QoE is meas-ured subjectively by the end user andmay differ from one user to the other.

QoS, which is an objective serviceperformance measure, is considered asone component contributing to QoE.Another part of QoE consists of humancomponents which may include emo-tions, linguistic background, attitude,motivation, etc. This QoE shows aslightly different concept when com-pared with the QoE we presented inthe IPTV tutorial given at the 2006 IEEEBTS Broadcast Symposium.

There were suggestions to put serv-ice billing under Human Components.

Traffic management for IPTVHuawei proposed (ID0123) an IPTVmulticast services traffic managementmechanism based on functionalitiesover NGN. In order to provide Multi-cast QoS in the current model, it isproposed to add a new reference

point between the NGN controlblocks.

Nortel proposed (ID0211) a tem-plate for video coding and transmis-sion over IP networks, includingMPEG2 transport packet and H.264packet transmission with RTP. Therewas a suggestion to include additionalcoding and mapping based on input.

The ITU-T Recommendation Y.1541for Network Performance Objectivesfor IP-based Services was adopted todefine classes of network Quality ofService (QoS) with objectives forInternet Protocol performance param-eters. The association of IPTV serviceswith Y.1541 classes was discussed.The mapping of Y.1541 QoS classeson IPTV services was defined. It wasnoted that the list and definition ofIPTV services still needs to be clarifiedfurther according to the WG1 workprogress on defining IPTV services.Thus, this table should be updatedafter the service list and each IPTVservice scenarios are clearly defined.The identified services are examplespending WG 1 outcome.

Application layer reliabilitysolutions for IPTVARQ (Automatic Repeat Request), FEC(Forward Error Correcting) and Hybridwere identified as schemes to recoverpacket losses during the delivery ofdata over networks. ARQ-based errorcontrol scheme is a good candidate tosupport application layer reliability forsoft real-time streaming and interactiveuser service in IPTV. ETRI (ID0220)proposed three ARQ standardizationactivities which can be well applied to


Fig. 2. QoE Dimension


IPTV services. These include the ITU-T X.607 (ECTP-3), ITU-T X.608 (ECTP-5) and IETF RFC 3940 (NORM).Further adaptations for IPTV applica-tions were requested.

ETRI (ID0219) also analyzed theuse of application layer reliability solu-tions according to IPTV service type,since various types of IPTV data needdifferent error control schemes accord-ing to their inherent characteristics.While the real-time streaming data iswell handled by FEC-based error con-trol schemes, soft real-time streamingand interactive user services are wellhandled by ARQ-based ones.

Performance monitoring forIPTVZTE (ID0152) introduced some opin-ions on monitoring points and moni-toring methods towards IPTVperformance monitoring. It also intro-duced opinions on service monitoringcontents and network status monitor-ing methods (ID0153).

Korea (Republic of) (ID0188) pro-

posed to adapt the VQEG’s objectiveperceptual video quality measurementmethods, including full-reference (FR),reduced-reference (RR), and no-refer-ence (NR), into IPTV performancemonitoring. Some implementationissues were addressed.

Apart from parameters suggested inthe ITU-T Recommendation Y.1540 forIP Availability Performance Parameters,Huawei (ID0122) proposed additionalparameters for IPTV network monitor-ing. It proposed that the IP layer usethe bandwidth, IP layer available band-width, etc, together with other existingnetwork performance parameters, suchas IPTD (IP packet Transfer Delay),IPDV (IP packet Delay Variation), IPLR(IP packet Loss Ratio) etc., being usedin IPTV applications.

One output liaison document, enti-tled “Performance Monitoring Parame-ters for IPTV”, was produced anddelivered on the third day to ITU-TSG12 for Quality of Service and Per-formance. This document asks com-ments from ITU-T SG12 on some new

performance parameters proposedduring the WG 2 meeting for the mon-itoring of IPTV services.

Four living lists were also producedfor further study.

During the afternoon’s plenarysession on the last day, 18 liaisonstatements were produced, alongwith six meeting reports created andapproved.

The next meeting of the IPTV FGwill be held from 22 to 26 January2007 in Mountain View, California,USA.

Acronyms:ITU-T X.607: Information technology –Enhanced Communications TransportProtocol (ECTP)

Dr. Wei Li is a research engineer at theCommunications Research CentreCanada (CRC). His current researchinterests include broadband wirelesssystem, DTV system, broadband multi-media processing. Dr. Li is a memberof IEEE and BTS.


The Regional Radiocommunications Conference 2006(RRC-06)By Klaus Huber, LS Telecom Ag, Germany

BackgroundFrom 15 May 2006 through 16 July2006, the Regional Radiocommunica-tions Conference (RRC-06) took placeat the ITU in Geneva. This was thesecond session of the conference, ofwhich the first session had takenplace from 10 May 2004 through 28May 2004, also in Geneva.

The geographic scope of the RRC-06 conference comprises about 120countries: Europe, Africa, Arabiccountries and the former SovietUnion States, or more precisely “ITURegion 1 excluding Mongolia butincluding Iran from ITU Region 3”.Only a few representatives fromthese countries had not been able toattend the conference. On the lastday of the conference, signatures for

the Final Acts had been deposited by101 countries.

Conference ObjectiveThe conference objective was toestablish a frequency plan and devel-op coordination procedures for digi-tal broadcasting. Digital broadcastingin this context includes DVB-T and T-DAB for which protection ratios andprotected field strengths are given inthe Appendix of the Final Acts. Theunderstanding of many administra-tions was that this allows for therelated systems DVB-H and T-DMB tobe introduced using essentially thesame parameters as for DVB-T (ETSIEN.300 744) respectively T-DAB(ETSI EN.300 401 which is “Eureka147”-DAB).

The new Plan which is containedin the annex of the Final Acts servesas a successor to the Stockholm 1961Plan (ST61) in the European Broad-casting Area and the Geneva 1989Plan (GE89) for African and adjacentareas. In fact, there were simultane-ously a few sessions held by the ST61and GE89 countries in which thosePlans were formally abrogated as thenew Plan replaces the old ones. Ineffect, three broadcast conferenceswere taking place during May/June2006 in Geneva.

ScopeThe ST61 and GE89 plans remainvalid in band I, a frequency range thatis outside the scope of the RRC. Theplan entries of the ST61 and GE89


Plans which fall within the scope ofthe RRC-06 have been incorporated asthe Analog GE06 Plan. The newAgreement covers the frequency rangefrom 174 to 230 MHz (band III) and474 to 860 MHz (band IV/V). Theplan provides a transition period dur-ing which the Analog Plan entries stillwill have their protection. A contro-versial issue was to decide on whenthe transition period should end. Inthe Final Acts, the Plan specifies 17June 2015 for both the VHF and UHFbands. However, there is a footnotefor 21 countries - most of them fromAfrica - which for them states 17 June,2020 for the VHF transition period toend. In Europe many countries intendto complete the transition some yearsearlier than 2015.

Channel raster on VHFSeveral countries (France, Ireland,Baltic States and numerous other EastEuropean Countries) decided tochange to 7 MHz channels from 8MHz channels in the VHF band III forthe digital plan while retaining theirtraditional channel raster for analogtransmissions. The channel raster onUHF is 8 MHz in Band IV/V andapplies throughout the RRC planningarea. The same Multiplex can be usedfor 1:1 transmission on both VHF andUHF only if both channels have thesame bandwidth.

The reason to change to a 7 MHzraster in the VHF band is to allow har-monization with adjacent countriesand provide a better match to thechannel raster of T-DAB, which isfixed and best adapted to the 7 MHzraster VHF TV channels. Having eightinstead of seven channels on VHFmight have also played a role.

On VHF, the channels are sharedbetween DVB-T and T-DAB. There isno exclusive use of channels for eitherof them. Allocation of channels maybe decided on a national basis, butthere is no RRC-wide rule on it. Evenif such a division is made on a nation-al basis, there will be a sharing withtransmissions of the other system fromneighboring countries.

The complexity of the planningwas impressive. There was not onlyco-channel DVB-T or T-DAB inter-ference, but there was the optionfor each administration to have alsotheir analog TV and other primaryservices in the respective TV bandsto be taken into account in theplanning process. Consideration ofthe analog ass ignments wasdropped during the RRC-06 and acomplementary analysis was under-taken to study the effect.

On VHF, the different channelrasters did add even more complexi-ty since it was necessary to considera large number of protection ratiosfor overlapping channels. Since noprotection for analog TV serviceswas applied in the planning process,the plan positions could be occu-pied by their digital counterparts. “Inthe planning process” does notexclude the protection of the analogtransmissions during the transitionperiod.

Assignments andAllotmentsThe digital Plan consists of two mainentry types which are assignments andallotments. An assignment is a planposition designed for a transmitter,while an allotment is to be seen inconjunction with an area (“sub-allot-ment”, of which there can be several,up to nine). Within an allotment area,the same channel may be used every-where, given that certain field strengthconditions outside the area are notexceeded. This arrangement offers amore flexible planning approach andapplies especially for single frequencynetworks (SFNs), which are possiblewith OFDM systems such as DVB-Tand T-DAB.

Some countries followed exclusive-ly allotment planning while somehave followed exclusively assignmentsas plan positions. Many countrieshave both allotments and assignmentsin the Plan.

The first planning case of allot-ments for digital terrestrial broadcast-ing had been established in the

Wiesbaden 1995 Agreement betweenCEPT countries (the Europeantelecommunications administrations),which was purely allotment planningfor T-DAB.

As source of interference comingfrom an allotment, not a single trans-mitter position is taken, but a “refer-ence network” is assumed, which isvirtually shifted along the allotmentcontour. To adapt for different exten-sions and powers of such networks,four types are specified for DVB-Tand two types for T-DAB. This situa-tion also reflects different receptioncases which the planning targets forfixed rooftop antennas, portable out-door reception, portable indoor recep-tion and mobile reception.

Planning IterationsDuring the planning process, thecountries submitted their requirementsand, at that stage, the requested chan-nel could still be given as a “range” ofchannels (such as “UHF” or “21-36,38-60” etc.). The creation of the Planincluded the optimization task tocheck compatibility and - where a“range” of channels was given - assignchannels in a way to find an optimumof requirements fulfillment.

From a mathematical point of viewthis is an NP-complete task, so thecomputational effort rises faster thanthe polynomial and brute-force meth-ods are no longer possible. Duringthe conference, such computationstook place over the weekends con-sisting of four iterations. In between,the administrations could alter theirrequirements after negotiations withneighbors and to facilitate planning.They produced machine-readable“administrational declarations”, tosupersede the results of the compati-bility calculations at the ITU anddeclare compatibility of certainrequirements of a neighboring coun-try with its own requirements. Thetwo men with experience in suchcomputational tasks from conferencesbefore were Ken Hunt and TerenceO’Leary of the European BroadcastingUnion (EBU), of which Mr. Hunt was



on the compatibility calculation sideand Mr. O’Leary provided the opti-mization part. They belonged to the“core conference processing unit”(CCPU), in which mainly ITU staffwas working in the processing -weekdays and weekends and at criti-cal times both day and night.

To achieve the most efficient “num-ber crunching”, CPU time on the“GRID” was granted by CERN, world’slargest nuclear research institution,also located in Geneva (and known tomany as “the place the WWW wasinvented”). “On the GRID” means asubset of the European EGEE projectwas to conduct distributed computingwith participating sites in Italy, Spain,Germany, Poland and Russia.

The final result is that now there aremore than 70,000 digital plan positions(assignments + allotments). The print-ed form of the Plan for digital broad-casting has more than 2000 pages.

Organization ofConference WorkNegotiations between countries couldnot take place in plenary sessions. Toreduce complexity and enable parallelwork, the planning area had beensub-divided into “CNGs” (coordinationand negotiation groups). There werefive CNGs, two less than initiallyintended, but due to limitations ofrooms and availability of ITU staff,additional groups could not be accom-modated. The CNGs were sub-divid-

ed into sub-CNGs, for example theEuropean CNG1 was sub-divided intosix regional sub-CNGs.

The CNGs reported to Committee 4,which covered “Planning”. The twocommittees with the most engineeringbackground were Committee 4 (Plan-ning) and Committee 5 (Regulatory)with its workgroup 5B with responsibil-ity for the Technical Annex to the Plan.Committee 4 was chaired by Mr. DanielSauvet-Goichon of TDF, France, andCommittee 5 by Mr. Slimane Djemateneof Algeria. The conference chairmanwas Mr. Kavouss Arasteh of Iran.

The Fruit of Years of WorkThe work did not begin with the firstday of the RRC-06 conference, but thefinal Plan reflects the success of years ofwork. Two years before had been thefirst session of the conference, the RRC-04, which convened three weeks inGeneva. Resolutions and a report of theRRC-04, about 350 pages, had been for-warded to the RRC-06. The frameworkfor the planning methods had beendescribed therein. Even the RRC-04 hadnot been the starting point. After ITUCouncil Resolution 1185 had called forsuch a conference for digital broadcast-ing, a Task Group 6/8 was establishedunder ITU-R Study Group 6, which hadsix meetings in Geneva and prepared areport which served as an importantinput document for the RRC-04.

Between RRC-04 and RRC-06, dur-ing the “intercessional period”, groups

were created by the RRC-04 to workon planning and regulatory matters.Test runs with the compatibility calcu-lation and optimization part of thesoftware, mainly provided by the EBU,have taken place with real input dataprovided by the administrations, sothat the first iteration during the RRC-06 was not the first run and someexperience, both on the processingside and on the side of the countriessubmitting data could be gainedbefore the conference.

The Final Acts of the RRC-06 arenow available through the ITU Book-store in English, French, Russian, Ara-bic and Spanish.

About the AuthorKlaus Huber (Member, IEEE and BTS)received his diploma in physics fromFreiburg University and worked subse-quently in the frequency planningdepartment of SWF, public radio and TVbroadcaster in Baden-Baden. Afterserving as a project manager for ahandheld differential GPS device atGEOsat, Mülheim an der Ruhr, hejoined L&S Hochfrequenztechnik GmbHin Lichtenau in 1998, which later wentpublic and is now LS telcom AG. Hisfield of work is in broadcast planningand coordination software. Mr. Huber isa member of DPG (Deutsche Physikalis-che Gesellschaft) and VDI (VerbandDeutscher Ingenieure). He frequentlyattends workgroups at ITU-R in Genevafor the sector member LS telcom.


Plan to attend NAB2007and visit the

IEEE BTS Information Booth

Conferences: April 14-19, 2007 Exhibits: April 16-19, 2007

Las Vegas, Nevada USA

For details, visit the NAB2007 web page at http://www.nabshow.com



2007 IEEE International Symposiumon Broadband Multimedia

and Broadcasting

Mark Your Calendar

Broadcast Technology Society445 Hoes LanePiscataway, NJ 08854 USAPhone: +1 732 562 3906Fax: +1 732 981 1769

Registration, Program & Hotel Information will be posted at:www.ieee.org/bts

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The IEEE Broadcast Technology Societyextends its heartiest congratulations toApril and Blair Monroe on the additionof their new baby, Holly Blair Monroe,born on 31 August 2006. Holly, Moth-

er and Father are all doing fine. Aprilis currently on maternity leave caringfor Holly. The BTS deeply appreciatesthe hard work and dedication April hasprovided to the wide range of BT Soci-

ety operations, conferences and publi-cations activities which she providedas IEEE BTS Senior Administrator. Weall wish April and Blair much happi-ness and joy, as they care for Holly.


BTS Senior Administrator has new addition to her family!

April Monroe and her first family addition, Holly Monroe.


IEEE Broadcast Technology Society Newsletter 28 Spring 2006

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.445 Hoes LaneP.O. Box 1331Piscataway, NJ 08855-1331

Don’t Delay – Renew Today

Continue to enjoy the benefits of IEEE Broadcast Technology Society Membership:

• Receive and contribute to a quarterly newsletter with reports on society and local chapter activities and up-to-date news from the international broadcasting industry.

• Receive and contribute to the IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting, ranked in the top 25% of all telecommunications journals, and the optional IEEE/OSA Journal of Display Technology.

• Receive a special issue in 2007, on Mobile Multimedia Broadcasting, bundled with the first issue of the Transactions on Broadcasting.

• Join BTS chapters worldwide, or in regions without chapters, promote new chapters.

• Become involved in the development of broadcast technology related IEEE standards.

• Participate in the community of broadcast engineers and stay up to date in the fast evolving field of broadcasting and broadband multimedia.

Look for your renewal package in the mail, or to renew your membership on-line visit:

http://www.ieee.org/web/membership/renew/index.html


from the presidentbts.ieee.org/images/files/newsletters/winter06.pdf · volume 14, number 4, winter...

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