TEST REPORT

Improving Optical Signals

Global
Invacom
GI FibreIRS
O2E

expands fibre optical distribution systems

improves signal quality at the output
amplifies all 4 bands of a Ku satellite
replicates the original LNB
44 TELE-audiovision International The Worlds Leading Digital TV Industry Publication 03-04/2015 www.TELE-audiovision.com

www.TELE-audiovision.com 03-04/2015 TELE-audiovision International

45

TEST REPORT

Improving Optical Signals

The Ideal Amplifier

The GlobalInvacom FibreIRS family of products
are specially designed for
top quality satellite and terrestrial TV distribution systems. Fibre is the key word
here. The basic idea of this
distribution system is a conversion of the electrical signals coming off the satellite
to fiber optic signals right at
the LNB output or better yet
even inside a dedicated optical LNB, a system GlobalInvacom pioneered. The result
is that the signals distributed
off the LNB use fibre optic
cables rather than the usual
coax cables. Thanks to the
very low signal attenuation
of fibre optic cables, long
distances (even in the range

of kilometers) do not pose

any problem.
More important than endlessly long cable runs in most
cases is the possiblity of lots
of signal splitting. If you split
an optical signal into n ports
you will get 1/n signal power
at each output. To be very
precise, slightly less than 1/n
due to some additional coupling loss. So, you can not
split an optic signal endlessly
but nevertheless it is possible
to split it up to 32 times in
GlobalInvacoms system and
keep the original signal quality at each split as good as at
the LNBs output. But thats
not all! If, at every fibre line
end, you use a quad opticalto-electrical converter, you

will get 32x4=128 outputs of

perfect signal from a single
LNB. That is the real potential of fibre optic installations.
While 128 outputs fed
by one single LNB already
seems to be quite a lot, what
do you do if you need even
more top quality outputs? Of
course, you can always multiply such systems starting
by installing more satellite
dishes. But there is a more
practical and elegant way.
GlobalInvacom
came
up
with the new FibreIRS O2E.
Together with the already

known FibreIRS ODU this

system hugely expands the
number of possible outlets
fed by one single fibre optic
LNB.
How does it work? Lets
assume that our system
consists of GlobalInvacoms
optical LNB (GI Fibre MDU)
connected to a 1:32 optical
splitter (GI Split32pro). This
gives us 32 optical outputs
to which we could connect
optical-to-electrical
converters producing signals
understandable by satellite receivers. If we use the
GlobalInvacoms converters
(GI FibreIRS GTU) this gives
us four independent electrical outputs just like from a
regular Quad LNB.

03-04/2015
GI FibreIRS O2E Converter
Amazing: better signal at the output
than what goes in

www.TELE-audiovision.com/15/03/globalinvacom

But now instead of connecting the FibreIRS GTU

converter we can connect
the new converter - the GI
FibreIRS O2E. This is also
an optical-to-electrical converter but its output is not
the same as that of the GI
FibreIRS GTU. The GI FibreIRS O2E generates a
stacked signal containing
all sub bands of the original
satellite Ku-Band of both polarizations. So, its bandwidth
is not just about 1 GHz but
about 4 GHz. Its output is in
fact the same as the output
of another GlobalInvacom
product: the wholeband universal LNB FibreIRS LNBm.
So, now at the end of one
of the 32 fibre optic lines we
have an electrical wholeband
46 TELE-audiovision International The Worlds Leading Digital TV Industry Publication 03-04/2015 www.TELE-audiovision.com

signal containg all the transponders from the original

satellite Ku Band. What can
we do with that?
Those of our readers who
still remember our previous
test reports of GlobalInvacom products may remember another of GlobalInvacoms products: a dedicated
device converting the wholeband electrical signal to the
optical domain: the GI FibreIRS ODU. Normally, you
would use the GI FibreIRS
ODU along with the above
mentioned LNBm. But if you
want to multiply your distribution system you connect
the GI FibreIRS ODU to the
wholeband output of the GI
FibreIRS O2E. For this purpose, you need a special
short and thick coax cable
because of the high bandwidth. At the output of the

GI FibreIRS ODU we get the

optical signal again but much
stronger than at the input of
the GI FibreIRS O2E. We may
say that a combination of the
O2E and the ODU forms a
kind of an optical amplifier.
However, it is not an ordinary amplifier. An ordinary
amplifier would amplify optical signals but could not
maintain the signal quality as
good as in the input. In other
words, we would get a strong
enough signal to be split
again but its carrier-to-noise
or MER would be worse. Not
so here! The combination of
the GI FibreIRS O2E with the
GI FibreIRS ODU does not
just amplify the signal but
regenerates it. It means that
digital errors are corrected
during demodulation and
re-modulation of the signal.
Now, if we connect another

1:32 splitter after combining

the GI FibreIRS O2E with the
GI FibreIRS ODU we can expect a strong and error free
output signal as in the original installation before that
combination.
So far about the theory.
But does it really work like
that in real life? Thats our
job to find out in the TELEaudiovision test center! So
we collected all necessary
products: we took an optical LNB (GI FibreMDU), GI
FibreIRS Split32pro, GI FibreIRS O2E, GI FibreIRS
ODU, GI FibreIRS Split16pro
and GI FibreIRS Quad GTU
converter. We connected all
these devices as shown in
the measurement setup circuit diagram (Fig. 1).
Figure 1 also presents our
optical signal measurement
results. As you can see, the

Fig. 1 Test setup circuit diagram.

48 TELE-audiovision International The Worlds Leading Digital TV Industry Publication 03-04/2015 www.TELE-audiovision.com

strong signal at the output

of the optical LNB is attenuated by 16.65 dB when passing through the 1:32 splitter,
then it is boosted by 16.4
dB after passing the O2E
and ODU combination. So,
in fact, its original strength
is almost exactly recreated
at the output of the ODU.
We decided to split the signal again, this time by a 1:16
splitter and convert it to the
form acceptable for a regular satellite receiver in the
Quad GTU converter. Would
we have used another 1:32
splitter we would have gotten almost exactly the level
of -8.9 dBm which was present at the input of the O2E
and ODU combination. So we
may say that combining the
GI FibreIRS O2E and the GI
FibreIRS ODU plus a GI FibreIRS Split32pro will result

plified, regulated and with

removed errors, the signal is
then ready to be split again
by an optical splitter and
sent hundreds of meters further through fibre optical cables. And when you convert
it back to the electrical form
at the end of a fibre optical
cable, its strength and quality is better than that measured directly a regular LNB
output.
What previously has been
seen impossible to achieve:
to re-create the original

in almost exactly 0 dB conversion gain/loss. In a real

life installation, however, it
makes more sense to use
the 1:16 splitter first and
the 1:32 splitter second, as
this allows for poorer input
signals.
Please note that for our
test we used quite long fibres cables: 350 meters in
total and despite of this the
signal strength was practi-

EXPERT

1. Testing GlobalInvacom's new GlobalInvacom GI FibreIRS O2E.

3 rolls of 100m fibre optic cables provide a virtual distribution
system.
2. This is GlobalInvacom's GI FibreIRS LNB mounted on a small
satellite dish at TELE-audiovision's Test Center. Up to 32 of
the new GI FibreIRS O2E could be connected to it, all of them
replicating this one LNB, thus enabling a theoretical endless loop
of all identical signal sources - all fed by one single LNB.

cally unaffected.
So our test set up revealed
that the signal strength was
great but what about signal
quality? Before installing the
test setup as in Figure 1 we
put a regular universal KuBand LNB on a 85 cm dish
and took reference measurements. The dish was
aimed at HOTBIRD on 13
East. Then, we installed the
optical LNB (GI FibreMDU)

50 TELE-audiovision International The Worlds Leading Digital TV Industry Publication 03-04/2015 www.TELE-audiovision.com

source signal after many

splits - has not turned on its
head: the re-created signals
turns out to even be better
than at the source! GlobalInvacom has transformed the
way of distributing (not only)
satellite signals by using the
fibre optic technology. With
the new GI FibreIRS O2E it
is now possible to expand
hugely the number of outputs and each of these even
with a better quality than
what the comes out of the
original source LNB.

OPINION

and connected it to our test

setup. Finally, we measured
the very last output of the
Quad GTU. Because this was
the same signal as from a
regular universal LNB we
were able to compare the
output of a whole GlobalInvacom distribution system
with the output of a regular
good quality universal KuBand LNB our reference.
The results shown in the
graphs are breathtaking. Not
only the channel power of
all transponders was much
stronger and regulated at 80
dBV throughout the whole
Ku-Band but also signal

quality, expressed here as

Modulation Error Ratio, improved!
This is something impossible with regular amplifiers.
Signal quality will always degrade when measured along
a long distribution system
using analog amplifiers. But
the combination of the GI
FibreIRS O2E and the GI FibreIRS ODU is not just an
amplifier. The original signal
is regenerated and during
this process digital errors
are detected and fixed in a
similar way a diital tv receiver is doing it when processing a transport stream. Am-

GI FibreIRS O2E
RECOMMENDED
Optical to Electrical Converter PRODUCT BY

Jacek Pawlowski
Test Center
Poland

+ Very strong and regulated output signal

Signal quality is even improved due to error correction during
regeneration
The number of available outputs is multiplied by at least 32
times

none

www.TELE-audiovision.com 03-04/2015 TELE-audiovision International

51