The current economic climate and increasingly competitive marketplace is driving cable operators to optimize utilization and efficiency of their upstream plant.
However, a problem exists when more bandwidth is utilized, as more efficient, but also more sensitive, modulation schemes are leveraged. Impairments that had previously gone unnoticed now present a significant barrier. An understanding of these problematic impairments is critical in order to properly identify, estimate, isolate, and minimize their impact to support this critical transition cable operator’s now face. A goal of this paper will be to expose these key impairments that must be managed, and present a strategy for successful optimization of bandwidth utilization and efficiency.