IPTV headend and IP backbone solution in Ulricehamn

Customer need

Svesat’s plan was to build up an IPTV headend in Ulricehamn with over 100 TV services. Since Ulricehamn is one of the node points in an IP backbone network called Västlänk, with over 24 city carrier network connected to it, the aim was also to feed the services further over the Västlänk from Ulricehamn to Borås and Alingsås, where Svesat already had an headend ingesting mostly analogue TV-services. These three networks would then have a total of 15 000 connected subscribers.

Svesat was able to feed TV services over dark fiber to the Ulricehamn network by using a 1550nm transmitter from Teleste. Teleste Luminato digital headend was used for service acquisition at Ulricehamn. This enabled Ulricehamn to receive digital TV services from Svesat and offer them further to other local cable TV networks via IP backbone.

The major benefit pursued by this solution was to have just one IPTV headend in which the reception of all the TV services could be centralised. Smart card operations and TV service upgrades would then take place only in one place instead of three separate headends.

Solution to customer’s need

Västlänk IP backbone is connected to the switch GbE uplink ports (2), from where the services are delivered to other locations. The total amount of payload in the backbone is around 700 MBit/s. The transmission via the backbone is based on a leased DWDM wavelength and rented capacity via a routed network.

The Luminato HE receives and delivers the following TV services:

• 25 analogue TV services – base packages
• 3 FM services
• 119 Satellite services from 4 different satellite positions
• 10 HDTV services with a payload between 15-25 Mbit/s
• 109 SDTV services with a payload between 2-10 Mbit/s

Each service is ingested from the Luminato SFP interface as a clear MPEG-2 SPTS multicast IP stream. The services are fed to a 24-port switch, which is connected to:

• Cryptoguard CA system
• Management switch
• Management computer
• 24 QAM EDGE QAM – Teleste Virtuoso

All digital services are multiplexed to different 64QAM multiplexes in Teleste Virtuoso. In total they use 22 x 64QAM muxes to feed out 119 TV + 3 FM services. Cryptoguard is then adding scrambling to the multiplexes in Virtuoso.

Benefits achieved

• A pure IP based HE platform
• Smallest form factor – 1U high and can handle up to
• 12/24 DVB-S2 receivers in one chassis
• Low power consumption, max. 100 W for a full chassis making it a energy efficient product
• Competitive price

The long-term relationship between Svesat and Teleste has engendered other big and successful projects like:

• Bornet (ATMux HE platform and FTTB network- 2005)
• Skellefteå Kraft (ATMux HE platform and FTTB network – 2007)