Professional Wireless Systems (PWS), a Masque Sound company, recently designed and installed the wireless system for QVC production facility. QVC, the leader in electronic retailing, broadcasts live 24 hours a day, 364 days a year, and reaches approximately 96% of all U.S. cable homes, as well as over 23 million satellite homes. The QVC receiver and transmitter was the largest antenna system Florida-based PWS has installed to date.

The receiver side of the installation included two Sennheiser 1046 racks coupled to a passive, sixteen way multi-coupler with dc bias.

Over 1.5 miles of PWS low loss cable was used for the receive project. To overcome the cable losses, twelve PWS proprietary Active Helical Antennas with 12dB gain amplifiers, four PWSGX-8 combiners and 80 MHz band pass filters were installed throughout the QVC System to cover the needed areas. The resulting antenna system insures QVC of full, crystal clear, communications, IFB operations and the ability to use their RF microphones anywhere within the 250,000 square foot production facility.

Program hosts have been particularly outspoken about their love of the new system. They've remarked about how much they appreciate being able to walk anywhere in the facility confident of completely unimpeded sound communications.

Power to drive the active antennas and inline RF amplifiers was attained via a custom PWS Combiner Power Distribution System. Front panel indicators and power redundancy was required to expedite on-demand troubleshooting. Open or shorted circuits, on the antenna side, are indicated on the front panel of the power distribution system. In the event of a power supply failure, a built-in switching system would instantaneously switch to the redundant, back-up power source as insurance against the loss of live programming.

The transmitter side of the installation included 6 HME bases with 6 Lectrosonics IFB's. System transmitter outputs were individually fed thru passive PWS 16-way splitters into active PWS eight-way combiners and distributed to their individual zones. Band planning was as critical as the hardware itself and was accomplished by engaging PWS IMD studies, RF sweeps and good old-fashioned experience. The entire install was designed and supervised by PWS Division Founder James Stoffo.