Harris to Receive Technical Emmy Award for RF Filters

Harris
Corporation, an international communications and information technology
company, will be awarded a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award from the
National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) for developing special
transmission filters that help broadcasters improve the quality and reduce the
costs of operating digital television signals. Harris will be presented the
award for developing the ATSC Broadcast Transmission System RF Filters at a
ceremony January 7, 2008, at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
in

Las Vegas.

The ATSC
RF filter technology, which was awarded a U.S. patent in 2005, was pioneered by
Robert J. Plonka, principal engineer with Harris Corporation (now retired), to
overcome potential quality and interference problems stemming from operating
adjacent analog and digital channel assignments. The resulting band-pass
RF filters maintain highly reduced side-band emission levels to eliminate
interference with other signals in adjacent channels, particularly when
broadcasting at full power DTV with dual-purpose capability to use that same
filter as an adjacent channel combiner. When used as an adjacent channel
combiner, the RF Filters provide the necessary mask filtering and merge the two
adjacent channels together into a single transmission line feeding the
antenna. This concept reduced broadcasters’ installation costs, tower
reinforcement costs and maintenance costs associated with running a second
transmission line and antenna.

In
November of 2000, KFSN-TV, the ABC affiliate in

Fresno,

Calif.,
became the first station to employ the technology in its broadcast operation,
broadcasting its digital signal on VHF channel 9. today, the ATSC
Broadcast Transmission System RF Filters have become an industry-standard
component deployed across a variety of ATSC DTV transmission platforms by
third-party vendors

Tim
Thorsteinson, president of Harris Broadcast Communications, said, “We’re
thrilled to have been selected by NATAS for our efforts to advance ATSC signal
transmission through the use of sharply tuned band-pass RF filters.
Today, DTV stations in the

United
States use these RF filters to stay in
strict compliance with FCC specifications. Ensuring that DTV signals
maintain highly reduced side-band emission levels means that adjacent spectrum
may be used reliably for other purposes without the risk of interference.”