New development of test and measurement brought by the integration of three networks

"The integration of three networks has brought historic opportunities to my country's cable network, but also severe challenges." Zhang Haitao, deputy director of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, made it clear at this year's CCBN. Wei Leping, director of the Science and Technology Committee of China Telecom Group, also recently expressed a similar view: "In the process of the integration of three networks, telecom operators, radio and television, and surrounding industries will all be beneficiaries, but at the same time, the integration of three networks will also face huge challenges in terms of technology, system and market."

The development of the triple play service has put forward completely different bandwidth and service quality requirements than before, which requires engineers to use appropriate test equipment and correctly configure the location of instrument monitoring points in the entire network in order to provide important data such as key performance indicators of the system. How to achieve higher service quality assurance and user experience improvement through effective test and measurement technology is the key to the success of operators, equipment providers, content providers and other related industries under the stronger market competition conditions after the triple play.

The topic of the integration of three networks has once again aroused great enthusiasm in China's IT industry this year. Behind the widespread attention is the huge industrial development opportunities that the integration of three networks will bring. A market research company believes that in the next 3-5 years, the various fields of the integration of three networks will maintain an annual growth of 30%-50%, and the market size is expected to reach about 500-800 billion yuan.

Respond to new testing requirements brought by more services, more content, QoS, and QoE

"With the advancement of the integration of three networks, there will be some integrated services including IP, audio and video, and Internet services. The requirements for different technologies for these services will inevitably increase, which will bring about an increase in the demand for testing of more standards, interfaces, and formats." Wang Zhongyuan, marketing director of Tektronix Greater China, once pointed out.

The result of the integration of three networks will inevitably be that telecommunications, radio and television and surrounding enterprises will more widely carry out multi-play broadband services such as BoD, VoD, IPTV, etc. How to use advanced test and measurement equipment to ensure the service quality and user experience of the newly launched services is very critical. In particular, with the popularization of high-definition flat-panel TVs, the increase in digital TV channels, and the richness of high-definition program sources, users' expectations for the quality of program audio and video are constantly increasing. Improving user experience has become the biggest challenge for operators, and deploying appropriate test and measurement equipment to optimize and monitor content, equipment and networks has become an effective means of response.

From equipment to content, from acquisition to transmission, the detection of all links is very critical. Any problem in any technical link will affect the image quality, and then affect the end-user experience. In terms of content, with the advancement of the integration of the three networks, more content providers will emerge. How to detect image color, amplitude, brightness, color gamut and other quality indicators in post-production, high-definition production, advertising production, etc., especially the emergence of a large number of file-based video quality detection, which brings great challenges to traditional detection and monitoring modes. In terms of equipment, to develop and enjoy new IP services, TV stations, network companies or telecommunications companies need to purchase new system equipment, and users also need to equip new terminals, such as Internet TVs, IP set-top boxes, etc. The purchase and testing of these devices must rely on powerful detection and monitoring tools.

In terms of network transmission, since the IP network itself is an unreliable network, and new triple-network convergence services such as IPTV require high bandwidth, low transmission delay and low delay jitter, problems in any link of the entire network may cause mosaics, intermittent sound, or even inability to watch TV when users watch TV, so the network must be monitored. How to provide stable triple-network convergence services, ensure service quality, and improve user experience under the existing Internet infrastructure conditions is a certain challenge for operators. In the process of integrating some new functions and services with existing network terminals, the terminal product's operational convenience, performance stability, and various user experiences including program switching delays still need to be continuously improved.

With the rapid increase in HD channels and the bandwidth management issues that come with it - cable operators are looking for cost-effective ways to monitor content impairments that impact their customers' viewing experience. In addition to traditional Quality of Service (QoS) monitoring, new approaches are now beginning to focus on QoE monitoring. Utilizing these unique impairment detection methods and visualization methods of the Tektronix network probe product line, cable operators can quickly detect those problems that truly affect the viewer's viewing experience so that they can take accurate steps to identify and resolve these problems. QoS monitoring is still very important in order to find the root cause of network problems; without QoE monitoring, operators cannot easily determine what type of QoS problems are actually affecting the viewing experience.

Key components of Tektronix's end-to-end solution are a range of network probing products and the VQNet network element management system. These network probing products and related key video quality test products include: MTM400A capable of receiving QPSK modulated or DVB-S2 compliant RF signals, RFM300 capable of receiving 8VSB modulated RF signals, IPM400A for Gigabit Ethernet IP distribution systems; and QAM400A for QAM modulator output monitoring.

What kind of test and measurement environment should be established for the integration of three networks?

From analog to digital cable TV, two-way interactive video services and integrated services after the integration of three networks, the test and measurement requirements involved, whether at the head end, network or terminal, are becoming increasingly complex, and timely response to monitoring issues is also crucial to ensuring service quality and user experience. Therefore, integrated, efficient, easy-to-use testing and monitoring equipment is very important, and a good test and measurement environment based on these devices will help system equipment manufacturers, terminal equipment providers, operators and content providers seize the business opportunities of the integration of three networks.

With its consistent advantages in digital TV network monitoring solutions, Tektronix provides monitoring and detection equipment that fully supports the integration of three networks, including: front-end monitoring of network access points (such as content acquisition, content transmission and content access); on-site installation testing of IP network-based equipment components (such as encoders and IP switches); selection and quality evaluation of network infrastructure (such as encoders/set-top boxes), etc.

(I) Networked, multi-format monitoring solutions solve integration business challenges.

The convergence of services will inevitably bring about the need for convergence of test and measurement environments. Under the conditions of triple-network convergence, operators may need to test QAM interfaces and IP interfaces separately. Numerous test points and signal detection in different formats pose challenges to traditional test equipment.

"The remote monitoring software platform we developed, VQNet, takes this type of convergence needs into consideration. It supports network detection solutions for all Tektronix digital TV monitor detection points. It can support up to 500 detection points, and these detection points can be located anywhere in the video distribution system." Wang Zhongyuan said. Whether it is an IP interface or a QAM interface (Tektronix's new QAM400A QAM/transport stream monitor launched at CCBN this year can perform confidence testing, verification and diagnosis of RF and bit stream signals on any QAM channel), or a signal received by satellite, the software can be used to directly monitor each detection point.

Similar testing requirements are also reflected in the testing of multiple standards after the integration of the three networks, that is, one instrument can implement the testing of almost all standards. Taking the automatic video measurement system as an example, some of the current leading systems can be configured as any combination of analog component SDTV, HDTV and RGBHV video formats, and can support a wide range of video formats. For example, the automatic video measurement system VM6000 integrates signal acquisition, optimized video measurement algorithms, test signal files and various test accessories into an integrated test system solution. In the past, when conducting video product verification tests, it often took several hours or even days to complete, but now it only takes a few seconds or minutes to complete using VM6000.

(2) Automated testing and measurement methods improve efficiency.

The complex testing requirements of the integrated services after the integration of the three networks must improve the test and measurement efficiency and require more automated test tools. Traditional cable TV operators use TV walls to manually monitor program quality and record problems manually when they occur. They cannot save the current original data, so they cannot analyze and solve the problems that occur, and it takes a lot of time, manpower and material resources. The current leading picture quality analyzers such as the Tektronix PQA500 have adopted the concept based on the human visual system, providing a set of repeatable and objective picture quality measurement solutions that are very close to the subjective human eye visual evaluation, providing valuable information for engineering and technical personnel to optimize video compression and image reproduction, so that engineering and technical personnel can provide high-quality universal carriers and distribution transmission services for users and viewers. The correlation coefficient between the objective evaluation results and the subjective evaluation results of the PQA series of Tektronix has reached 0.94, which is almost completely consistent with the subjective evaluation results, and the efficiency is greatly improved.

The integrated services of the three networks are increasingly using file-based content, and the quality inspection and management of these contents is a new challenge for operators. Test equipment providers have developed a fully automatic system specifically for file-based content monitoring and verification. Operators can integrate this system into their networks to automatically detect the correctness of file-based content. The inspection standards can be set at many levels of the network. Similar high-efficiency test and measurement methods have been widely used in the measurement of front-end, network and terminal equipment of current three-network integration services such as IPTV.

Conclusion

The application of the Internet has truly ushered in the information age, and the integration of the three networks will provide a strong physical platform and institutional guarantee for the widespread development of Internet applications in China. The various innovative applications and huge market potential brought about by the integration of the three networks will bring unlimited business opportunities to related companies. In the deployment of the business of the integration of the three networks, operators will shift their focus from system diagnostic tools to providing 24/7 real-time monitoring and service quality assurance. Tektronix, a leading test and measurement equipment provider with extensive application experience and expertise in video testing, network management and network diagnosis, will give full play to its greatest advantage in providing integrated test and measurement solutions to help China's radio, television and telecommunications-related industries meet the business opportunities brought by the integration of the three networks and bring the best application experience to end users.