AN2014-18 Interconnecting Bosch Conference Systems using SynCross.pdf

AppNote interconnecting Bosch DCN Next Generation Conference System s An Axon Application Note Geoff Love Application Specialist / Product Manager

COPYRIGHT © 2014 AXON DIGITAL DESIGN BV ALL RIGHTS RESERVED NO PART OF THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF AXON DIGITAL DESIGN BV.

APPNOTE

Interconnecting DCN NG Conference Systems

Introduction Background Bosch Security Systems produce the entirely digital Bosch Congress Network (DCN). Facilities include basic microphone management, delegate identification and registration, electronic voting, information distribution and display, and extensive simultaneous interpretation.

By simply daisy-chaining DCN Next Generation wired units or adding DCN Wireless units, any configuration can be put together. This modular structure means a system can be tailored for conferences at all levels. Systems are easily extended by adding more equipment like audio expanders or software modules.

Fast, cost-effective installation is an important benefit of the DCN system. DCN Next Generation units use thin, flexible, twin coaxial cables to carry all the system’s digital signals, eliminating the need for costly and vulnerable multi-core cables.

The cables are easily run through existing ducting and cable conduits. They can simultaneously carry up to 32 high-quality contribution channels and 32 high-quality distribution channels.

Individual systems can be dynamically interconnected to form larger systems, this AppNote sets out to show how the use of the Axon SynCross Routing module facilitates this inter-connection.

System Inter-connection Physical Connections The standard method of inter-connecting DCN NG Conference Systems is to link their LBB4414 (multimode) or PRS-FINMO (single-mode) Fiber interface modules via a pair of appropriate SC/SC fiber-optic Figure 1.

Interpreter Desks

The diagram below (Figure 1) shows the interconnection of two DCN Conference systems.

Basic System Interconnection

Concentus Units Central Control Unit

Wired Discussion Units

cables. The information is carried over these links using 1300nm wavelength infra-red light.

Wired Discussion Units

Inter-system connection (Rx/TX) is 1300nm multimode fiber

LBB4414 or FINMO Fiber Interface

DCNNG Conference System 1

If more than two DCN NG conference systems are to be connected together the fiber is "daisy-chained" between each system's LBB4414 or FINMO unit. This is shown in Figure 2 below with data from each system looping through the other systems in the daisy-chain.

Concentus Units

Interpreter Desks

Wired Discussion Units

Wired Discussion Units

Central Control Unit

LBB4414 or FINMO Fiber Interface

DCNNG Conference System 2

implement it is not possible to reconfigure systems without physically re-patching fiber cables. This may lead to errors in re-connection and, depending on the exact location of the system components, may lead to extended downtime with users being unable to access the system during the reconfiguration.

Whilst this connection method is simple to initially

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APPNOTE Figure 2.

Interconnecting DCN NG Conference Systems

Multi-System Interconnection

Interpreter Desks

Wired Discussion Units

Concentus Units

Wired Discussion Units

Central Control Unit

Central Control Unit

LBB4414 or FINMO Fiber Interface

LBB4414 or FINMO Fiber Interface

DCN Conference System 1

Interpreter Desks

Wired Discussion Units

Interpreter Desks

Wired Discussion Units

Wired Discussion Units

DCN Conference System 2

Concentus Units

Wired Discussion Units

Concentus Units

Central Control Unit

Central Control Unit

LBB4414 or FINMO Fiber Interface

LBB4414 or FINMO Fiber Interface

DCN Conference System 3

Concentus Units

Interpreter Desks

Wired Discussion Units

Wired Discussion Units

DCN Conference System 4

Routed Connections The use of an optical-electronic-optical router (as shown in Figure 3) allows easy re-assignment of systems at the push of a button. All systems remain physically connected to the Router and the "daisyFigure 3.

chaining" is achieved by changing the Router's internal configuration, meaning reconfiguration can be achieved in a matter of seconds.

Multi-System Routed Interconnection

Interpreter Desks

Wired Discussion Units

Concentus Units

Wired Discussion Units

Central Control Unit

Central Control Unit

LBB4414 or FINMO Fiber Interface

LBB4414 or FINMO Fiber Interface

DCN Conference System 1

Concentus Units

Interpreter Desks

Wired Discussion Units

Wired Discussion Units

DCN Conference System 2 Axon SynCross

Interpreter Desks

Wired Discussion Units

Concentus Units

Wired Discussion Units

Central Control Unit

Central Control Unit

LBB4414 or FINMO Fiber Interface

LBB4414 or FINMO Fiber Interface

DCN Conference System 3

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Concentus Units

Interpreter Desks

Wired Discussion Units

Wired Discussion Units

DCN Conference System 4

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APPNOTE

Interconnecting DCN NG Conference Systems

Using Axon SynCross Router to Interconnect DCN Conference Systems SynCross Routing System Axon introduced the Synapse modular processing system in 2001, the system comprises a three 19" frames housing 4 (1RU), 8 (2RU) or 18 (4RU) modules. Within the range of modules available is a routing system - SynCross. This made up of two module types 

GPX880 - 8-input, 8-output cross-point module



GIO880 - 8-input, 8-output expansion module

Each system has a single GXP880 at the core of the system providing both I/O (up to 8 inputs and 8 outputs) and routing. The system can be expended to a maximum 40-inputs and 40-outputs by the addition of (up to) four GIO880 modules, these modules are located two on either side of the

Figure 4.

GXP880.

Is should be noted that the SynCross system was originally designed to routed serial digital video signals and hence has a number of control parameters that are not relevant to this application.

Changing these values will have no effect on the continued operation of SynCross in a DCN NG system.

Each module requires a back panel, these provide housing for 4 input and 4 output SFP fiber transceivers.

It should be noted that the connections on the back panels are arranged so that dual Tx and dual Rx SFP modules are required, bi-directional module will not function correctly in these units.

Axon SynCross Router Rear Connector

BPH25 NPUT 1/2 INPUT 3/4 INPUT 5/6 INPUT 7/8 ETHERNET (BPH25) RS422 (BPH26) OUTPUT 1/2 OUTPUT 3/4 OUTPUT 5/6 OUTPUT 7/8

Connections The rear connector does not have permanent fiber connection but provides standard SFP cages which can be populated to suit the requirements of the system thereby saving the cost of unused fiber transceivers.

The SPF transceivers are arranged as Tx and Rx pairs not bi-directional Tx/Rx units.

Each DCN NG Conference system is connected to the routing system by a two-core fiber optic-cable terminating in SC connectors at the DCN Fiber Interface and LC connectors at the SynCross Router.

The diagram below (Figure 5) shows the fiber routing between four DCM conference systems and a single GXP880 module. Note the fiber pair from the

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DCN system is split between two different fiber transceivers on the GXP880 back panel.

If GIO880 expansion units are used in the system they have exactly the same SFP layout on the back panel and the connections from the DCN Conference systems follow the same pattern.

It has been found that the optical output power of the Bosch LBB4414 and PRS-FINMO units is designed for longer fiber-optical cable lengths.

The use of 5-10dB optical attenuators may be required on the input to the SynCross Rx SFP units to prevent overloading the optical receivers which would lead to data loss and poor quality communications.

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APPNOTE Figure 5.

Interconnecting DCN NG Conference Systems

Axon Router to Bosch DCN Connections

Input 1/2

Bosch DCN System 1

Input 3/4 Input 5/6 Bosch DCN System 2

Input 7/8

Output 1/2

Bosch DCN System 3

Output 3/4 Output 5/6 Output 7/8

Bosch DCN System 4

Fiber SFP Selection Axon recommends the following Dual Fiber SFP Tx and Rx transceivers, all function at a wavelength of 1310nm but have been tested and found to work

correctly with the 1300nm Bosch Fiber units. Note these are dual transmit and dual receive units not and single Tx and Rx in one SFP module.

Transmit dual SFP Fiber module:

Receive dual SFP Fiber module:

ES-1330-DT-2M-DN

ES-30-DR-2M-DN

SynCross Configuration Axon provides a freely downloadable Control and Monitoring application, Cortex, for the Synapse range of processing modules and Routing system.

temperature and operating voltage of the SFP modules.

It is available from the Axon website at http://www.axon.tv/EN/support/downloads and navigate to Cerebrum/Cortex Installation.

Figure 6 below shows the configuration to route the output from each of four DCN conference systems to the inputs of the next in a daisy-chain thereby connecting all four system together.

The application provides a graphical user interface to control the SynCross Router and also monitor the status of the various system components including the current route setting and the status,

The router allows the operator to freely assign system outputs to inputs and providing a totally flexible and rapidly reconfigurable multi-zone conference system.

Figure 6.

Axon Router configuration showing 4 DCN systems connected together

Source DCN System

Receiving (Destination) DCN System

This shows each DCN conference system routed to the next in a daisy-chain (Conf 1  Conf 2  Conf 3  Conf 4  Conf 1)

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APPNOTE

Interconnecting DCN NG Conference Systems

Appendix 1. Cortex Cortex Basics Figure 7.

Cortex User Interface

Device View System View

Graphical view of control and status parameters

Tree structure showing connected devices

Event Log Database of status changes occurring to a specific device or across the system

Cortex has three main screen areas, the System View shows a tree structure of the devices that are connected to the system or have been manually added, the Device View provides a graphical user

interface allowing easier configuration or monitoring of a device and the Event Log provides a view of the SQL database which stores all devices' status changes.

System View The System View shows the connected devices, here we can see a SFR18 (a Synapse 18 module frame) with IP Address 192.168.50.15 and called Demo 5.

In slots 14 - 18 are the five modules which make up a 40 x 40 SynCross router, the highlighted module being the main GXP880 routing module.

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APPNOTE

Interconnecting DCN NG Conference Systems

Device View

The Device View shows the Control tab for the GXP880 module, the SynCross system was originally designed as a video router and there are a number of control parameters that relate to that usage. However there are parameters that are relevant to the interconnecting of DCN Conference systems one of these being the setting of the local Ethernet port on the GXP880 module to enable remote control.

Here we can see the IP Config dialog box has been selected and a drop-down menu with 3 items has been revealed.

Event Log

The Event Log shows the events that have been logged for the selected device, clicking on a module in the System view will show the events for that module, if you select a frame you will be shown the events for all of the modules in the frame and for the frame itself.

Each event displays date, time, the IP Address and location of the device and also the device's name. It then gives a brief description of the event that has been logged and other user created information such as the physical location.

Each triggering action that causes an event can be assigned a severity, in this view the event that is 7th in the list, with description Inp1 Power Stat Too_Low, has been given the severity of Error and so the background color is shown red, status events that have been assigned a Good severity are shown as green and those with Warning are shown as orange. Control events, such as setting a route in the SynCross are colored blue and those without any assigned severity (Info) are displayed with a grey background.

The SynCross cannot obtain status information from the DCN NG signals passing through the router (it was originally designed to hand digital video signals) therefore some parameters will be shown as NA and may be accompanied by a red LED, this will not affect the operation of the SynCross router in this application.

Adding Devices to a Cortex Control System By default when the Cortex application starts-up it will attempt to detect all of the Axon devices on the local subnet. Assuming that the IP Address of the frame containing the SynCross Router and the PC APRIL 2014

running Cortex are in the same subnet range and they are physically connected then the frame should automatically appear in the System View.

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APPNOTE

Interconnecting DCN NG Conference Systems

If this does not happen open the menu item Configuration and select Cortex Configuration, this Figure 8. Cortex Configuration Dialog

will open a dialog box similar that shown in Figure 1 below.

IP Address of the PC running the Cortex application should either be on the same subnet as the frame or the frame's subnet should be in the search list

These check-boxes should be checked

The network adaptor's IP Address displayed should be on the same subnet as the Synapse frame or the subnet should be manually added to the Additional Subnet To Search list. Also ensure that the check boxes for "Perform device search at startup" and "Automatically add unknown frames" have been checked.

Figure 9.

Alternatively it is possible to manually add a frame to the system, by clicking on the Network menu and selecting Add network Device and then Add ACP Device and the dialog box shown in Figure 9 is displayed allowing manual entry of the frames IP Address and it also allow the frame to given an identifying name.

Add ACP Device Dialog

Further help is available from within the Cortex application by selecting the Help menu item and navigating to the area requiring more information,

below is shown the help information for the different views within the system.

Figure 10. Add ACP Device Dialog

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APPNOTE

Interconnecting DCN NG Conference Systems

Customized Cerebrum Control System Axon produce a customizable control system Cerebrum - which allows the use of user definable screens which could be designed in such a way that a graphical representation of a conference venue could be produced and the inter-system routing both shown and controlled through an intuitive graphical interface.

user interface allowing easy connection and disconnection of DCN NG systems. The size of the system and number of groups can be readily expanded if required.

The flexible graphical designer allows many different methods of showing connectivity and also allows users to import their own logos and symbols.

Figure 11 shows a example of a simple graphical Figure 11. Graphical Display Showing Separate DCN NG System Linked Together

DCN NG Systems

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Highlighted selection connected together

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