By Mark Adams, Scientific-Atlanta, Inc.
The demand for an amplifier that gives a high level of distortion immunity while providing large amounts of amplification has driven the CATV industry over the last three to four years. The introduction of feedforward technology presented a viable solution to this problem. During its infancy, feedforward presented a manufacturing challenge to the CATV suppliers who sought to participate. The development and introduction of the integral feedforward package approximately three years ago however, offered the industry an excellent opportunity to maximize cascade lengths for optimum performance while maintaining superior distortion results.
This paper will look into the areas of reliability on the integral feedforward package from the standpoint of heat transfer, and mean time between failures (MTBF). This paper will also investigate the conditions under which feedforward amplifiers are being used. Areas in this section include the economics of feed forward and how field personnel know that feedforward is offering the distortion improvements they need for their systems to function properly.