Core Insights: TDM Mesh Networks - A Simple Alternative To Leaf-Spine ST2110

July 21st 2021 - 09:30 AM
Tony Orme, Editor at The Broadcast Bridge

IP is delivering unprecedented flexibility and scalability for broadcasters. But there is a price to pay for these benefits, namely, the complexity of the system increases significantly as we add more video and audio over IP.

Timing is fundamentally important to broadcast workflows for video, audio, and metadata streams. Although ST2110 has successfully abstracted away the media essence from the underlying transport stream, accurate timing is still needed.

In this Core Insight we look at an alternative to ST2110 while at the same time maintaining many of the benefits of IP. That alternative is TDM (Time Domain Multiplexing). Using high-speed fiber cabling and switching nodes doubling as SDI, AES, analog, and IP interfaces, TDM delivers mesh networks that provide broadcasters with a contrast to the leaf-spine model.

This Core Insight, sponsored by Riedel, discusses the benefits to IP by using TDM mesh networks. It describes how TDM works, why the signal latency is predictably low, and how a fully IP, SDI, AES and analog system operates.

With a specialist use-case outlining the Eurovision Song Contest, TDM mesh networks demonstrate how they overcome many of the challenges of ad-hoc live events.

Download this Core Insight now if you are a technologist, engineer, or their managers and you need to understand how TDM operates to keep infrastructures simple.

Supported by

You might also like...

Standards: Part 6 - About The ISO 14496 – MPEG-4 Standard

This article describes the various parts of the MPEG-4 standard and discusses how it is much more than a video codec. MPEG-4 describes a sophisticated interactive multimedia platform for deployment on digital TV and the Internet.

Chris Brown Discusses The Themes Of The 2024 NAB Show

The Broadcast Bridge sat down with Chris Brown, executive vice president and managing director, NAB Global Connections and Events to discuss this year’s gathering April 13-17 (show floor open April 14-17) and how the industry looks to the show e…

Audio For Broadcast - The Book

​Audio For Broadcast - The Book gathers together 16 articles into a 78 page eBook which explores the science and practical applications of audio in broadcast.  This book is not aimed at audio A1’s, it is intended as a reference resource for …

Project Managing The Creative Elements Of Live Sports Production

Huw Bevan is an Executive Producer, Consultant and Head of Cricket for Sunset+Vine, in London, one of the UK’s leading independent sports production companies that produces a full slate of rugby, soccer and cricket events each year. This…

Standards: Part 4 - Standards For Media Container Files

This article describes the various codecs in common use and their symbiotic relationship to the media container files which are essential when it comes to packaging the resulting content for storage or delivery.