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Why “diversity” isn't enough.
Written by Ira S. Faberman, Iftron Technologies, Inc.   

Iftron's diversity systems are the best on the market. If you interested in the best quality video, they're a must have.
It all seems simple enough: get two antennas and two tuners spaced apart. Then when one antenna is compromised by signal fade and signal bounce, the other antenna may have a better signal to offer. So all we need to do now is select the best signal and send it to the output.

But that's when all the trouble starts. It turns out that selecting the best signal seems easy at first glance, but is no easy task. Take diversity systems that work on received signal strength (RSSI for short) as an example. It seems clever to monitor the signal strength of each signal and pick the strongest one, because the strongest signal must be the best signal, right? Well as it turns out, the answer is 'only sometimes.' Consider an antenna that is being blasted by a signal from some interfering source. The new signal will appear stronger, but it's not your signal. Instead of being yours, it could be anything—some other video, wifi, some other form of communication or who knows what? But whatever it is, if you send it to your video screen, you can bet that the result is going to be pretty ugly. Suddenly it's not so clear (pun intended) that RSSI diversity systems are a good solution.

All Iftron products, including the new Nano system, feature the company's patent pending technology.
Or how about a diversity system that examines the video sync pulses, like those systems that are made from standard, commercially available receivers and a switching box? You remember those edgy little pulses in the video that tell the monitor when to change to the next line or frame, don't you? If they could detect when one was missing, they would switch to the other signal, right? You already know the answer: 'only sometimes.' That's because by the time they figure out that the sync pulse is missing, the video signal and therefore the way it looks on the display is already loused up. Worse, if you switch to the other signal, it may have a missing sync pulse too. Then what? Adding insult to your otherwise beautiful video, it is not uncommon for your video transmission to mix it up with interfering signals to produce some really weird results that still have your original sync pulses in it, so the signal still looks 'good' to the diversity system and no switching occurs. This type of diversity system just can't cope with this sort of thing and is not going to make you very happy.

So at Iftron, we decided to rethink the problems and limitations of diversity receivers and the result is a patent pending line of diversity products that combine real-time analysis of signal quality and sync pulse integrity in a novel way to determine which signal is the best. The result is a diversity system that we think is better then the sum of its parts. By uniquely combining the most important factors, our system chooses the best signal more often then either of the afore mentioned methods combined. Yes, there will be those times when neither signal is a good choice, so we can't claim to walk on radio waves, but on average, our novel system turns in performance that can outshine systems costing thousands more. Best of all, we have built this patent pending performance into both our YellowJacket Pro and our new Nano modular diversity products. So whichever you choose, Iftron has you covered.

 

Future Hobbies is the largest supplier of Iftron products. >> See our Diversity Reception & Control section.<<


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