Cheetah Technologies to Release CMD-EL+ in July 2011

Cheetah Technologies has announced planned enhancements to its CMD-EL end of line RF monitor that will dramatically expand cable system operators’ ability to perform critical digital measurements on QAM video carriers. In addition, the product development will be expanded to provide support for DOCSIS 3.0 and IPv6.??

The new CMD-EL+ has been designed to provide cable system operators with a seamless upgrade path for ensuring the most accurate measurement of QAM carriers as operators move to all-digital networks. Building on the CMD-EL’s success in measuring analog carriers and power levels in digital carriers, the new product has the ability to provide measurements critical to video quality on any QAM carrier in the network.

The CMD-EL+ features a new embedded cable modem module (eCMM) that leverages DOCSIS 3.0 chip technology, resulting in a highly-flexible solution: Operators can upgrade to measure both digital and analog carriers by replacing the eCMM in current products, purchase new CMD-EL+ units with the technology embedded or install new units that are designed to measure digital carriers only.?

The enhanced product enables cable operators to measure a wide variety of indicators across all QAM carriers, including pre- and post-Forward Error Correction (FEC) Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) and Bit Error Rate (BER), as well as Modulation Error Ratio (MER).  The CMD-EL+ also is able to capture QAM constellation data and can provide adaptive equalization measurements for QAM performance with regard to micro-reflections.