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Combining talents: from design through field service, Axcera engineers cooperate to ensure the quality of the company's RF equipment.

Article Excerpt
LAWRENCE, PA. Service is a key goal of Axcera, a manufacturer of television-transmission and wireless broadband equipment. The company's engineers must resolve significant test challenges to satisfy the demands of customers, who insist on top quality to keep their television stations on the air and their broadband data services fully accessible. Cooperation among design and test engineers from initial product conception through field installation and monitoring ensures that Axcera's systems are up to the challenge.

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The company was founded in 1982 by three RCA broadcast engineers who saw opportunities they believed RCA wasn't in a position to address, according to Rich Schwartz, director of marketing and product management at Axcera. Originally named ITS Corp., Axcera acquired its current name after a period of ownership by ADC Telecommunications in the mid-'90s. The company's first products were solid-state exciter retrofits that replaced aging exciters in RCA transmitters; the founders also noted the emergence of the MMDS (Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service, a wireless implementation analogous to cable TV) market and followed up the exciter retrofits with solid-state MMDS transmitter systems. They applied their RF expertise up the power curve and by 1987 had introduced the first 10-kW TV transmitter.

Key to Axcera's founders' approach has been customer service, said Schwartz. "They wanted to build relationships that they perceived big, corporate RCA wouldn't or couldn't. Their belief was, 'if you just took care of the customer, you could get a lot more business,' and sure enough, they were right."

Customer service is particularly critical in the broadcast TV business because the physics of each broadcast channel is different, as is the terrain of the area served by each installation. Each channel has unique requirements with respect to waveguides and RF channel filters, and, added Schwartz, "you might successfully install a system on one channel at one location, but find that the same system at another installation on a different channel performs much differently. Customers completely understand that, but they also expect you to support them throughout the installation and afterwards. If site-related issues are discovered at turn-on, that's OK, that's expected, but you have to persevere until the customer is pleased."

High-mix lineup

Axcera currently offers the Innovator Series low-, medium-, and high-power solid-state television transmitters; Visionary Series high-power inductive-output-tube (IOT) transmitters that deliver up to 180-kW digital and 480-kW analog performance; and Axity3G broadband wireless-access RF products. The company also provides on-channel digital boosters, channel translators, and MMDS transmitters, channel combiners, and management systems. In...