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Projects
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The following are more of the most interesting projects that Haltec Enterprises'
Director, Ross Halgren has directed and/or been involved in.
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Project 3 - In 1989, a Fibre-Optic Acoustic Sensor Project was undertaken by AWA Research Laboratory (AWARL) to demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of an all-optical acoustic sensor array for helping protect Australia's extensive coastline, in the same way that the Atlantic SOSUS system has provided increased security to the USA. The fibre optic sensor system comprised an optical sensor coil and an optical transmission cable. The benefits of such a system are: the elimination of metallic parts which can be detected; the low fibre loss enabling very long distances up to 100km between the sensor coil and a landbased optical transceiver; and the extreme sensitivity of a coherent optical transceiver system for which a 180 degree phase change requires only a 0.75 micron change in fibre length due to acoustic signals modulating the diameter of the optical sensor coil. This AWARL system was demonstrated at the Australian Industry Defence EXhibition (AIDEX) in Canberra in 1989 using a large fish tank filled with water; a model frigate on the surface dragging a optical sensor coil (as an optical towed array), a model submarine on the tank floor generating propeller noise; a coherent transceiver system; and a simple audio processor and headphones for attendees to the AWA Defence stand to listen with. The demonstration was very effective.
Project 4 - In 1994, AWA supplied to Telecom Australia the first turnkey demonstration Video-on-Demand Pay TV system over new DMT-based ADSL technology from Amati, which eventually became the industry standard. AWA had developed the FDDI-2 based AWANET-100 Multimedia Switch which could switch up to 96 x 2.048 Mbit/s MPEG-1 encoded video channels (non-blocking). At the same time AWA were manufacturing the ABC DCART disk-to-air audio server which was able to support 2.0 Mbit/s compressed video as easily as existing 1.5 Mbit/s uncompressed stereo audio. AWA and the ABC jointly developed a E1 buffer interface to DCART to enable seamless MPEG transport connections between the video server and the AWANET-100 video switch. The ABC DCART program software used by radio studios for managing the mixing and selection of audio content was used to instead manage the selection of video content. NTL equipment was used for MPEG-1 encoding of free-to-air and stored video content and decoding at the customer's premises. For the demonstration Pay TV system, the MPEG-1 encoder, new "VCART" video server and AWANET-100 switch were located at Telecom Research Labs (TRL) and the ADSL modems, MPEG-1 decoders, TVs and VCART remote video upstream control were located at Telecom's Pay TV office in the Melbourne CBD.
Project 5 - Between 1995 and 1996, AWA's Multimedia Products Manager, Ross Halgren, proposed a stackable Home Network Appliance for Pay TV, Internet and Telephony applications and a model was developed to demonstrate to various Government departments, the benefits of "Open" access network interfaces, rather than the proprietary set-top-box options being proposed by various carriers and service providers. At the same time, Ross was appointed by Standards Australia as the team leader of the Digital Video Services Task Group Reference Model sub-committee - with the objective of defining standards for next generation Pay TV, Internet and Telephony interfaces to the customer's premises. Unfortunately, the carriers and service providers got their way in the end, but the development of the proposed stackable Home Network Appliance continued for a number of years at a slow pace through AWA and eventually RBN industry sponsored projects undertaken by Macquarie University's Information Technology students in what was then Dr David Skellern's department. The next stage in the development of the stackable Home Network Appliance awaits new optical interconnect technology which is high on Haltec Enterprises' agenda in 2009/2010 to find and develop locally within Australia. Other applications of such technology includes the graceful upgrade of Blade Servers and Super-Computers from power hungry electrical backplanes to high speed, green-energy optical backplanes.
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