Broadcom Enhances IPTV Networks

With many cable service providers offering "triple play" packages that include phone, video and broadband Internet access, quality of service demands that line noise be reduced. Broadcom Corporation has released a new impulse noise protection technology that enables carriers and OEMs to improve voice, data and video services for their customers. The new impulse protection solution, marketed as Broadcom PhyR (pronounced "Fire") technology, incorporates Broadcom’s ADSL2+/VDSL2 firmware and provides a significant improvement in residual bit error rate (BER) as well as resistance against impulsive noise, resulting in an improved user experience for subscribers of telecommunications triple-play services.

Video services, provisioned over traditional copper loops, are susceptible to noise sources in the ambient environment that limit the coverage area over which services can be made available, or may even reduce video quality by inducing "macro-blocking." Today’s IPTV deployments require carriers to provide a certain acceptable level of impulse noise protection and margin settings, which determine an achievable data rate and the loop length over which voice, video and data or IPTV services will be delivered. Increasing noise protection in current IPTV deployments has an improved effect on residual errors, but has an adverse effect on the serviceable reach and data rate, thereby limiting the service coverage area. Broadcom’s PhyR technology improves noise protection without inducing limitations of reach, rate, margin or latency, providing operators with a tool that significantly reduces errors and improves the service coverage area, reliability and achievable revenue for IPTV investments.

In contrast to previous impulse noise protection techniques, Broadcom’s PhyR technology provides a number of key advantages :

As much as a 10 times higher impulse noise resilience

Significantly lower residual BER or packet-loss

An extended network service area (higher rate, longer reach, lower delay)

Simplified network provisioning (no per user "tuning")

Firmware upgrade to central office and customer premise equipment

Transparency to network and upper layer applications (reduces the burden on networks that use higher layer retransmission schemes for improving network efficiency)

All new and previously deployed Broadcom central office and consumer premise equipment silicon solutions are firmware upgradeable to the PhyR firmware. As a result, service providers will be able to offer IPTV and other ultra-high bandwidth applications using simplified provisioning with quality levels comparable to Ethernet, while making use of their existing copper plant infrastructure.

The new PhyR firmware runs on all new and previously deployed Broadcom ADSL2+ and multimode ADSL2+/VDSL2 semiconductor products. The firmware is sampling to early access partners and will be demonstrated next week at NXTComm 2007.