Robert Ames
President & CEO
SUIRG

Greetings and welcome to the inaugural issue of SUIRG's eNewsletter. We will periodically be providing news and updates about our organization as a service to our members and also to spread the word about our mission and accomplishments to the industry as a whole.

For those who may not be familiar with us, SUIRG is the Satellite Users Interference Reduction Group. Our primary goal is to reduce the number and length of satellite RF interference incidents. We would like to eliminate incidents but in reality all we can do is manage the problem.

Started informally nearly 15 years ago by concerned members of the satellite operator community, SUIRG incorporated in 2002. Our membership has since expanded to include a range of satellite operators, users, interference identification and location equipment manufacturers, and many related satellite organizations or service providers.

In this premier issue of SUIRG eNews, you will hear what SUIRG has been doing to classify and manage the RFI problem from our Chairman, James Budden. We also highlight a good news story from one of our members, PanAmSat, in the battle against RFI.

Before I sign off, I would like to extend an invitation to attend SUIRG's 2006 Annual Conference and Meeting, which will be held July 11 thru 13 in Stockholm, Sweden. We will waive the registration fee for first time attendees to encourage you to learn for yourself the benefits of SUIRG membership and networking. For more information, click here: http://www.suirg.org/events.shtml. We hope to see you in Stockholm!

R. James Budden
President
Satellite Communications Operations Consulting

The Satellite Users Interference Group Inc. (SUIRG) has been engaged in efforts to reduce radio interference to geostationary satellite capacity since the Group's inception over a decade ago. A key SUIRG activity has been the collection and analysis of data on global interference events for analysis. Early results of this data collection campaign have driven SUIRG to concentrate its efforts on three specific remedies that could have a major impact on the number of interference events.

First, in cooperation with WBU-ISOG and others, SUIRG produced globally recognized VSAT and SNG Universal Access Procedures. All SUIRG member satellite operators have agreed to abide by these procedures as best practices and minimum performance requirements for mobile operators. it's the Universal Access Procedure were presented to the ITU last year, who endorsed and accepted the communications carrier satellite up-linking guidelines as an ITU standard.

Secondly, in collaboration with WBU-ISOG and GVF, SUIRG produced VSAT installer guidelines to ensure a global common minimum standard for installers. These training guidelines incorporate all requirements for an installer to complete a professional installation. SUIRG and GVF are now surveying VSAT installation training programs with the goal of updating those with deficiencies and approving those which meet the SUIRG/WBU-ISOG/GVF standard.

SUIRG'S' third remedy, a longer-term effort, is to introduce an Interference Source Identifier (ISI) on all digital carriers. This enormous task kicked off with the definition of minimum data that should be embedded in a carrier to identify its source.

As a starting point, SUIRG and two of its member vendors are investigating the requirements for SNG video carrier ID since these are the most active carriers on any satellite system. The carrier ID will be used to assist in the identification of an interfering carrier by cross-referencing the ID with the equipment owner. Discussion is centered on where to embed the data, at the encoder or at the modem, how much data can be embedded in the overhead channel, and what data is required and what is optional. Also under consideration are the database requirements where the ISI equipment code and owner are cross-connected.

In addition to the goal of reducing RFI, an additional challenge is to make ISI a firmware upgrade that is backward compatible to units already in the market. It must also be inexpensive and as simple to implement on installed equipment as it is on the manufacturing line.

Satellite operators will require a communications monitoring system to extract this ISI data from the digital stream, while the monitor vendors will need to have the adaptive firmware in place to achieve the desired result. The Digital Spectrum Analyzers currently on the market are short-term capture and do not hold sufficient data to extract the ID from the incoming stream. However, the forthcoming third generation units will be able to sample sufficient time in the data stream to extract the required ISI data and present it to the monitoring operations center.

The final piece of the Carrier ID puzzle is for SUIRG to capture and track manufacturers' data that is embedded in the stream available to all satellite operators. This will involve close and careful coordination to overcome proprietary sales and customer data issues.

SUIRG and its members are actively engaged in and pursuing these RFI prevention remedies. We are optimistic of making good headway and to reporting positive progress report at our July annual meeting in Stockholm (http://www.suirg.org/events.shtml) as well as through this newsletter.

SUIRG Member PanAmSat Honors 77 With Operational Excellence Awards

In its ongoing effort to promote and acknowledge error-free operations at all uplink sites that access its satellite capacity, PanAmSat honored 74 broadcasters with its Operational Excellence Award in 2005. Many of the award recipients were not even direct customers of PanAmSat, further reinforcing the aims and objectives of the awards program.

Minimizing RFI (Radio Frequency Interference) continues to be one of the hottest topics at PAS user group sessions. In addition to training programs and industry wide access standardization, a recommendation from these User Groups was for PanAmSat to expand its award and incentives programs to further increase the awareness within the satellite services user community. Consequently, the Company modified its annual Operational Excellence Award program to focus on the broadcast user group.

In addition to overall winners in broadcast, full-time video and data, PAS designed a tiered level of award winners, including Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze level winners. Awards depend on the number of error-free accesses by each user. In 2005, PAS required a minimum of 50 accesses to be considered for an award. Click here for more information and a listing of the 2005 award winners.

[Excerpted with permission from On The Spot, PanAmSat, April 2006]

In its continued efforts at drawing attention to the issue of unintended RFI, SUIRG leaders will be speaking at the following events:

• Robert Ames, President and CEO, at ISCe in San Diego, June 13 and at the 24th AIAA International Satellite & Communications conference, held in conjunction with ISCe in San Diego.
• SUIRG Chairman, James Budden, will be addressing the RFI subject at the Broadcast Asia 2006 conference June 26 in Singapore.

For more information, call 1-941-575-1277 or visit www.suirg.org
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