Harris Corporation Deploys ONE Broadcast Communications System For The American Forces Network

An international communications and information technology company, Harris Corporation, has installed a comprehensive high-definition (HD) broadcast communications system for the American Forces Network Broadcast Center (AFN-BC) at the Defense Media Center in Riverside, California.
Comprising broadcast routing, automation, video server, core processing and asset management products, the Harris ONE system at AFN brings together highly integrated, cost-effective solutions that are ideal for organisations upgrading to HD services.
AFN delivers news, information and entertainment to almost one million troops worldwide outside of the United States. Jerry Shorter, Chief of Broadcast Engineering for AFN, said: "AFN has been utilising video server technology since 1995. We wanted to improve our legacy ingest and on-air video server capability, backup redundancy, and move toward receipt and delivery of all programming in digital format.
"Additionally, we wanted to advance from just receiving HD to providing a technical path of broadcasting it to troops globally."
Designed by systems integrator Snader and Associates, the Harris system at the AFN Broadcast Center employs 18 NEXIO AMP servers, which enable AFN to prepare for air and play out up to 12 standard-definition programs daily.
Two Harris/Isilon Systems NXIQ clustered storage silos provide robust, reliable near-line storage for AFN content. To maximise speed and consistency in the quality assurance process, the Videotek QuiC media analysis server analyses compressed digital content during ingest and enables problems to be corrected on the fly with no operator intervention. Invenio digital asset management oversees concurrent, mission-critical tasks taking place throughout the broadcast workflow and enables AFN to maximise the value of its digital assets.
CCS Navigator software enables AFN to streamline its day-to-day operational workflow by providing centralised, real-time control and monitoring of the entire broadcast system - including third-party products such as Dell Power Edge servers. With Navigator, operators can take control of any SNMP-enabled device on the network using a familiar, intuitive application and drag and drop parameters and alarms from multiple devices to easily build virtual device control and monitoring surfaces.
In response to AFN-BC Engineering's performance work statement, hundreds of new custom user interface pages were designed to meet the specific requirements of the AFN workflow, improve control efficiency and effectively monitor hardware failures across the network.
Lucius Stone, Director, Government Solutions, Harris Broadcast Communications, said: "Because maintaining full operational control of a network is critical to today's multichannel broadcasters, this aspect of the new AFN system was key in terms of size and scope and the overall work that was put into this project.
"Harris customised operator screens for audio and video processing, software routing control panels and more than 300 user interface pages for the AFN installation, which now represents one of our largest, single-site custom user interface implementations."
Further information is available at: www.myafn.net and www.harris.com.
(KMcA/BMcc)