BROADCASTING Reference
Full DVB-T coverage of the
Netherlands
After successfully participating in Go-ahead issued at IBC 2005 cially due to the results of the Regional
Radio Conference (RRC) in Geneva.
phase 1 and phase 2 when DVB-T The official contract for expansion
phase 3 was signed with network oper-
was introduced in the Netherlands, ator Nozema in Amsterdam during the Turnkey shelter solutions
International Broadcasting Conven-
Rohde & Schwarz was selected in fall tion (IBC) in September 2005. The orig- Fourteen of the 21 stations had to be
inal starting date for the project had to provided in shelters. Rohde & Schwarz
2005 as the exclusive supplier for the be delayed, however, and the first ship- was in charge of planning and pre-
ments were then planned for mid-2006. sented turnkey solutions to the cus-
third expansion phase (FIG 1). During Since the political decision-making pro- tomer. The transmitter systems includ-
cess in the Netherlands had to take the ing the cooling equipment and acces-
this project, more than 105 DVB-T shutdown of analog TV transmitters into sories were accommodated efficiently
account, the rollout had to be consider- and in an easy-maintenance manner in
high-power transmitters had to be ably accelerated in contrast to the orig- double-unit shelters. The shelters had
inal planning since some on-air dates a floor space measuring 3 m × 7 m and
installed to provide full coverage of had already been firmly set. Within were joined together on site to form
about a year, Rohde & Schwarz then a transmitter room (FIG 3). The size of
the Netherlands. installed 105 DVB-T high-power trans- and equipment in the shelters are spe-
mitters including accessories and put cially adapted to customer requirements.
them into operation. All shelters were fully preassembled in
Germany. The only work that had to be
done on site was to join the two shelter
Full coverage owing to flexible halves and to install the heat exchang-
transmitter design ers outside.
The 21 stations were equipped each
with a 4 +1 transmitter system (four Comprehensive project
main transmitters to broadcast the pro- handling with up to three teams
grams to four multiplexers and one
standby transmitter) in the power The project involved a lot more than
range between 400 W and 3.4 kW the mere delivery of transmitters.
(FIG 2). Nozema decided to exclu- Rohde & Schwarz examined the sta-
sively use the high-power transmit- tions in advance and – based on its find-
FIG 1 Coverage area of the DVB-T network in
phase 3. ters of the R&S ® NV7000 family from ings – planned the station upgrading,
Rohde & Schwarz since their flexible which it documented thoroughly for the
design can handle different power levels customer.
within a 4 +1 system. This is essential in
the Netherlands as the range can vary The supplying of materials had to be
Network greatly depending on the channel. The coordinated in the next step. In addi-
phase 1
Network fact that individual transmitter models tion to the actual transmitters, the var-
Network phase 3
phase 2 can be easily upgraded to handle other ious subcontractor products also had
power levels is a further important fea- to be handled. The accurate coordi-
ture. It proved to be beneficial through- nation helped ensure that all compo-
out the project as the coverage planning nents required for the individual stations
frequently had to be changed – espe- were always supplied together. Owing
to careful installation planning, it was
40
News from Rohde&Schwarz Number 194 (2007/III)
possible to set up the transmission sys-
tems quickly. Following their installa-
tion, they were put into operation by
Rohde & Schwarz engineers trained for
this purpose. Up to three installation
and system startup teams were on the
ground in the Netherlands during the
busiest phases of the project in order to
move things along rapidly.
Additional offer for DVB-H
In the course of the project, the cus-
tomer decided to use a further multi-
plex for DVB-H operation and contracted
Rohde & Schwarz to add one transmit-
ter to each of the stations equipped
Photo: authors
in phase 3. To handle this task as effi-
ciently as possible, Rohde & Schwarz
readied the stations for the additional
FIG 2 Front view of one of the 5 +1 DVB-T / DVB-H transmitter systems.
multiplex even before the actual DVB-H
rollout was started. The combining and
switching system, for example, was
equipped at the start for an additional
FIG 3 Two shelters were combined on site to create a single transmitter room.
channel in order to minimize downtimes
for further expansions. The first DVB-H
transmitters were shipped while the
DVB-T rollout was still in progress. The
last shelter was supplied in fall 2007.
Robert Bleicher; Simone Gerstl
Photo: authors
41
News from Rohde&Schwarz Number 194 (2007/III)