Case Study: Broadcast Coverage Analysis for Deutsche Telekom

Deutsche Telekom is the largest telecommunications service provider in Europe. It has played a leading role in key technology developments into the new millennium, helping power the global shift to an information-driven society and the worldwide liberalization of telecommunications.

RUVIS Application Interface

To enable this shift, Deutsche Telekom created one of the most modern telecommunications infrastructures in the world, incorporating more than 120,000km of glass fiber cable, an extensive ISDN network and wide-band cabling throughout Germany.

Deutsche Telekom is also committed to innovation in broadcasting, especially in transmitter planning and optimization. Broadcasters constantly seek to optimize the coverage of their radio and television transmitters. When considering a new transmitter, broadcasters need to select the best location and the most appropriate equipment; they also need to consider the interaction between the new transmitter and existing facilities; and, of course, they need to ensure the greatest possible coverage at lowest cost.

This image shows texture maps on a 3D terrain model of Germany.

Deutsche Telekom continuously assesses its existing and projected transmitters to fine-tune its coverage footprints, and to avoid interference with other transmitters or national and international broadcasters.

Both new build projects and routine monitoring generate a wealth of complex and variable statistics, covering anything from the height of the site to antenna heights, designs and power outputs, alternative frequencies, and the impact of local features such as tall buildings or mountain ranges. And because it's equally important to assure broadcasters and their advertisers of the best possible coverage, the technical statistics must be augmented by demographic data such as population densities and socio-economic categories.

Finally, the entire picture must be presented in a way that helps Deutsche Telekom address its technical issues; gives broadcasters and advertisers the information they need; and enables Deutsche Telekom's technical specialists to explore "what if?" options and see the results in a friendly, graphical presentation.

Deutsche Telekom invited the technical team of VISTEC Software GmbH to design a way to address all these issues. Working with Advanced Visual Systems, the VISTEC team developed RUVIS, a new Radiation Propagation Modeling Tool based on AVS/Express that supports planning engineers at all stages of a project:

• Project Definition:RUVIS provides easy access to disparate data types such as elevation, land usage, road maps, population density, simulation data, and more. This spatial data can then be selected in any resolution for further processing, such as blending or statistics.
• Site Simulation and Assessment: RUVIS includes a 3D projection that engineers can manipulate using AVS/Express tools to highlight planning problems, and a visibility modeler that provides a first approximation of transmitter coverage. This stage leads to a first, rough site selection.
• Visualization and Optimization: Here, RUVIS allows visualization of the coverage using a wave-propagation model. This is loaded into the application and mapped over the terrain display in the 3D projection. At the same time, other transmitters or planning variables can be selected and added and their effect displayed. Using AVS/Express, various design aspects of the transmitter under consideration can be modified and the effects displayed immediately.
• Interface and Output: A clear, powerful and effective interface allows the user to derive full benefit from the system. The user can define the legend and color assignments to meet individual engineering requirements, then reuse these assignments in other AVS/Express modules to ensure a consistent, interactive and user-friendly application. The system can also output to printers in photo-quality mode, and generates a text file that provides information on the project and the transmitters under examination.

Best of all, these benefits came at a low cost in terms of development time. AVS/Express's rapid application development capability meant that RUVIS was developed in a fraction of the time that would have been required for traditional programming, resulting in much enhanced time to market and reduced costs of both development and subsequent utilization.

Deutsche Telekom has implemented RUVIS in Germany and is using it to plan broadcasting coverage for East Germany and other countries worldwide. End users appreciate the ability to combine engineering data with demographic data to model coverage against population density, and find that the system's flexibility allows them to reverse-engineer models, starting from population density and back-tracking to determine ideal transmitter locations. With the emergence of new technologies such as digital broadcasting, Deutsche Telekom is confident that the modeling system will enable it to engineer the best possible solutions for its customers.