iBroadcast® Solution For A Major British Broadcaster

Astec implemented an integrated monitoring and control solution for a major British broadcaster that now monitors and controls over 22,000 devices across their entire broadcast chain and has seen service availability rise from 96% to 99.6%.
“We had already put the powerful control and monitoring capabilities of GE IP’s Proficy® HMI/SCADA – iFIX software into practice across our broadcast platform,” said the client Engineering Manager (Computer Systems).
“We had plans to develop a new integrated platform but were unsure on the most appropriate architecture or what features we should implement. Astec’s huge amount of experience in delivering GE IP solutions focussed us on the most appropriate solution. They totally understood our vision of a powerful, single unified system and helped us to realise it with their solution.”

Background
Providing in excess of 250 channels of TV and radio in the UK, this broadcast customer distributes either direct-to-home via the Astra satellite system or via third party cable operators. The digital platform also offers interactive TV services and services via the Internet. The company’s studios feed the control hub for uplinks to four Astra satellites.
Our customer strives to keep ahead of the competition by looking to improve its product portfolio. To maintain the uninterrupted supply of its existing services, the company seeks to take advantage of the latest technologies, while at the same time ensuring that expansion and change are easily incorporated without the need for redesign.

The Solution
The monitoring and control system was specifically created by Astec for the broadcast industry utilising the GE Proficy® suite. It provides a consolidated view of the status of the many elements of the broadcast platform and associated services and remote control of equipment to provide failover to backup hardware. It also enables equipment to be remotely configured. This can be undertaken from the Master Control Room or other input source (such as Video Server or tape), through editing, playout and transmission, to the headend (signal compression and multiplexing) and uplink to satellite systems.
Consolidated platform monitoring clearly shows where faults reside in the system and any associated affected services. A unified view enables faults to be seen in context to other systems resulting in rapid diagnosis of root causes. All faults are logged with a time and date stamp and can be sorted by system and/or device.
The flexibility of the system ensures that authorised personnel within the client organisation can monitor every disparate element of the platform (signal processing equipment, video servers, routers, satellite tracking equipment, etc.) across all locations in the operation. Full remote control of hardware is possible so that faults can be rectified immediately. The architecture has been designed with scope to include expansion into services such as Mechanical and Electrical (M&E) system monitoring and other segments of the technology platforms.
Chris Barlow, Operations Director at Astec, explained, “Astec firmly believes in using Commercial, Off The Shelf (COTS) products and takes a software engineering approach to implementing them, which differentiates us from other system integrators. Our position as the only Premier Solution Provider (PSP) for GE Intelligent Platforms in the UK reflects our unrivalled experience and understanding of the GE IP product family.”

System Overview
The Engineering Manager (Computer Systems) described how “Astec helped us realise the unified monitoring and control approach. The whole broadcast platform is visible via a common, intuitive user interface, and the flexible architecture means that the system is easy to expand and maintain. This is important for our business, a dynamic company operating in a marketplace where business needs are continuously changing.
“The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) has decreased, providing a more flexible system than we originally had. Astec has developed elements which are easily auto-configured across the system, reducing time consuming and error prone development. Astec added value by questioning the existing architecture, suggesting new approaches, and developing flexible systems.”

Architecture And Security
Operating a tiered, managed intelligent user login process, user access is configured and verified according to designated access levels.
Within the iBroadcast® system there are two different classes of Servers running GE IP Proficy iFIX software – Data Collector Servers and Master Servers. These act as nodes within the SCADA set up. A redundant pair of Master Servers in different locations is configured identically, so that fail-over to the backup server will occur automatically if connection is lost.
Each of the Data Collectors ‘hosts’ a group of physical devices that are being monitored and controlled. The communication interfaces of the devices are polled via a driver using SNMP, RS232/485 or GPI based protocols, accessing data items such as general info, status and alarms. The Data Collectors can then present the real-time data and alarms to remote iBroadcast® workstations. These Clients are located within the Main Control Room, as well as throughout the organisation for remote interrogation, reporting, maintenance etc.
The Master Servers aggregate alarms from the Data Collectors as well as being responsible for the systems ‘Focus’ feature (visibility by a particular Client). Alarm summary information is presented in a consistent format at the bottom of every screen and high priority alarms are presented visually as a ‘traffic’ light system of red, yellow and green according to status. The most recent 5 alarms are visible, while up to 200 are stored and are readily accessible via the scroll bar.
Clients connect to the Master Server first to get an overall view of the monitoring and control system and are then able to drill down to view information directly from the Data Collectors. GE IP Proficy Historian is used to store selected key performance data for future analysis. A Historian Collector is installed on each of the Data Collectors to send data to the Historian Server, which logs real-time data from devices, acting as a repository to collect, archive and distribute real- time information.
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(IT/CD)