Industry awake to cost of RFI

The issue of radio frequency interference (RFI) has risen in prominence in recent times as major operators such as Intelsat and SES have identified it as one of the main hindrances to their business.
One organisation that has long fought to publicise the…

The issue of radio frequency interference (RFI) has risen in prominence in recent times as major operators such as Intelsat and SES have identified it as one of the main hindrances to their business.

One organisation that has long fought to publicise the need for a more effective approach to this issue is the industry-funded Satellite Users Interference Reduction Group (SUIRG).

SUIRG President Robert Ames spoke to SatelliteFinance about the costs of RFI and the measures the group is taking to minimise the problem.

“The money spent on fighting interference comes from the bottom line,” he said. “That is where the impact is, and it ripples down from the satellite operators to service providers, and eventually to the end users.”

The financial consequences of interference are rarely made public. Through his work with SUIRG, Ames has been privy to a host of genuinely damaging incidents.

One operator he spoke with had an US$11m contract held up by interference for months, which cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars. Another operator told SUIRG it was losing US$3.5m per year because of reduced transponder use caused by interference.

On the service side, SUIRG has dealt with one major US broadcaster that is spending US$2m per year fighting interference.

“Ten years ago it was viewed as part of the business and people were dealing with it on an ad hoc basis”, said Ames. “Now they have whole departments dedicated to it. The cost today is significant, not just from the extra manpower. The geolocation equipment needed to locate the source of interference costs US$500,000, with recurring costs of US$20,000 per satellite beam.”

It is widely understood that the vast majority of interference cases are non-intentional. “Sometimes it is down to a lack of training and lack of practise,” said Ames. “People setting up an uplink need a checklist and a procedure to go through.”

To this end, SUIRG sponsors programs run by operators to offer proficiency training to industry technicians.

RFI has previously not been a topic the industry wished to discuss too openly, as it was felt that this weakened the business case for satellite over other forms of communication.

Ames said: “Five years ago, a senior manager at one of the major satellite operators told me he thought our organisation was doing a disservice to the industry by publicising the problem. My response was that we have to address the problems or they won’t get better over time. The industry has now woken up to the problem because the bottom line users have made it known they want more done to fight interference.”

Major operators such as Intelsat, SES and Inmarsat have been highly active in stepping up measures to combat interference, and last year formed the Space Data Association to operate a database of all satellite locations, broadcast frequency details and coverage areas.

SUIRG has long advocated this kind of cooperation between satellite operators and has been working on the development of another database that will allow companies to identify the kind of interference they encounter by matching the shape of the radio wave form to an extensive archive of wave forms encountered in previous interference cases.

SUIRG recognises that smaller operators do not have the available resources to tackle interference in the way the large ones can, so it seeks to foster a spirit of co-operation within the industry.

The group has also recently begun hosting an e-mail alert system. This requires any participating satellite operator to immediately send e-mail alerts detailing any interference on its satellites, so that other operators can quickly respond and offer assistance.

SUIRG has also identified the necessity for uplink carrier IDs to contain specifications that allow operators to accurately track interference. “We are moving closer towards carrier ID for all uplinks,” said Ames. “We have several manufacturers signing up to encrypt SUIRG specifications into their equipment.”

Ames hopes that universal carrier ID of this kind will be widespread for video transmissions by 2011, and for VSAT and data transmissions by 2015.