ETSI TM6 (Lule, June 1998)

file ref.: 983t13a0

PROJECT:

ADSL

STATUS

For information

STUDY POINT

ADSL over ISDN

SOURCE:

Author: John Cook, BT

Presented by Kevin Foster, BT on behalf of the FSAN VDSL working group
Tel: +44 1473 642986, Fax: +44 1473 648954
E-mail: kevin.t.foster@bt.com

TITLE

Splitters for ADSL over (ISDN or POTS)

LOCATION:

ETSI TM6 meeting in Lule, Sweden.

DATE:

22-26 June, 1998

DISTRIBUTION:

ETSI TM6 Members

ABSTRACT
This contribution describes requirements and an outline design for a Splitter intended to combine ADSL with
either (ISDN or POTS) on the same pair of wires. It starts from an UK perspective but the requirements are
discussed in a wider European context and also in the light of developments since the work was originally
done in mid-1997.

NOTICE
This document has been prepared to assist ETSI Standards Committee TM6. This document is offered as a basis for
discussion and is not a binding on BT. The content of the document may be subject to change in form and/or
numerical value after further study. The author specifically reserves the right to add to, amend, or withdraw the
statements contained herein.

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Splitters for ADSL over (ISDN or POTS)

1.

INTRODUCTION

The multiplexing of the ADSL and telephony signals onto the access network pair is done by means of a frequencydividing filtering arrangement, which has become known as a splitter. The high voltages involved in telephony
necessitate that this is a physical continuous time filter (with real inductors and capacitors!) although it may be
actively augmented [2] for reasons of performance.
As the least attenuation and crosstalk on access network pairs occurs at the lowest frequencies ADSL performance is
maximised if the splitter filters are designed to transition as rapidly as possible. For this reason the ANSI standard [1]
defines a transmission system in which the ADSL signals start at just above 20 kHz, requiring the splitter low pass
filter to roll off rapidly above 4 kHz so as to greatly suppress telephony transients at active ADSL signal frequencies
from 20kHz to 1.1MHz.
This was an adequate objective when the technology was first envisaged but the world has moved on since then. In
particular ISDN penetration has greatly increased and continues to do so, especially in the UK and much of the rest of
Europe. This means that as ADSL technology matures it is doing so into an environment containing significant
numbers of ISDN systems. Most ISDN transmission is based on bi-directional signalling at 160 kbits/s using the
2B1Q line code (4-PAM), having a Nyquist bandwidth of 40 kHz. Such signals clearly will not pass through the
ADSL splitters lowpass channel, which was intended for telephony. In this way ADSL according to [1] is
incompatible (on the same pair) with ISDN.
This problem has been widely recognised and two work-arounds have been proposed: One method would be to embed the 160 kbits/s of duplex ISDN within the ADSL payload. This method has its own
problems and will not be discussed further here.
The other method involves a splitter, which can duplex standard ISDN signals with ADSL signals. This necessitates
some form of non-standard ADSL system since the overlap in bandwidth must be avoided. Standards compliant
ADSL systems typically use the first 138 kHz for the upstream (one eighth of the total bandwidth 1104/8=138). It is
this band which is most drastically affected by the theft of bandwidth for ISDN. An evolving standard for ISDNcompatible ADSL involves shifting this band to its first set of alias images at 138-276 kHz, or alternatively doubling
the potential bandwidth for upstream to 0-276 kHz. Surprisingly some observers have estimated that a large shift in
ADSL lower band edge frequency only reduces ADSL range by only 10%.
Such a modification allows the contemplation of a splitter, which can support ISDN below ADSL. To be
operationally convenient such a splitter must be designed so that it can alternatively support (the same modified)
ADSL over POTS. This would allow ADSL to be installed without regard for underlying service (POTS or ISDN) or
for future upgrade to that service (POTS to ISDN).
This contribution discusses the requirements for and the design of such a splitter.

2.

REQUIREMENTS

A splitter effectively has 3 ports, the POTS port which is connected to other on-premises equipment (telephony or
ISDN NTE), the ADSL port which connects to the ADSL NTE and the LINE port which connects to the access
network pair, all as shown in Figure 1.

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POTS
PORT
ISDN/ADSL
splitter

LINE
PORT

ADSL
PORT

Figure 1 ADSL/POTS splitter ports

The requirements for the splitter are those derived from its functions of passing either telephony or ISDN and ADSL
and of keeping the two separate:
Zm (see Figure 2) is the assumed median working impedance of telephony.

[1]

POTS-LINE insertion loss in Zm should be 1 dB maximum from 200 Hz to 4 kHz. The

requirement has been shown to provide acceptable loudness decrease for the telephony
service.

[2]

POTS port and LINE port return loss against Zm when the other port is terminated in Zm
should be better than 18 dB, from 200 Hz to 4 kHz. Shown to provide acceptable talker
and listener sidetone degradation for telephony service over a wide range of practical
telephone and loop impedances.

[3]

POTS-LINE insertion loss in 135 Ohm should be less than 1 dB maximum from 100 Hz
to 80 kHz. This is required to minimise the range reduction of ISDN basic rate
transmission operating over the pair which in some deployment scenarios might actually
still be coming all the way from the local exchange. Although the ISDN Nyquist
frequency is only 40kHz, some ISDN transceivers are assumed to use 100% excess
bandwidth and hence are sensitive to transmission over a much wider frequency range.

[4]

POTS port and LINE port return loss against 135 Ohm when the other port is terminated
in 135 Ohm should be better than 18 dB, over the band 0 to 80 kHz. This is also required
to minimise the range reduction of ISDN basic rate transmission operating over the pair
which could be caused by poor impedance matching adversely affecting the transceivers
hybrid, ADC and echo-cancellation mechanisms. Although ISDN Nyquist frequency is
only 40kHz, some ISDN transceivers assumed to use 100% excess bandwidth and hence
are sensitive to impedance over a much wider frequency range.

[5]

LINE-ADSL insertion loss in 100 Ohm of less than 0.5 dB from fADSLmin to 1.1 MHz.
This is to provide minimal signal loss for the ADSL transmission system. As a design
target fADSLmin should be as low as possible consistent with meeting all other requirements.

[6]

LINE port and ADSL port return loss to 100 Ohm should be better than 18 dB from
fADSLmin to 1.1 MHz. This requirement taken from [1] modified for the ISDN-compatible
bandwidth.

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[7]

POTS-ADSL port isolation should be 70 dB minimum over the bands 200 Hz to

1.1 MHz, with some relaxation permissible in any narrow band (eg the transition band).
This requirement is based on the assumption that the common-mode attenuation of the
splitter and the balance of the line side network pair will determine the practically
achievable isolation. As no quiet ground is available the best common-mode attenuation
available is that offered by a single well-optimised common-mode choke of about 3035 dB. After such attenuation the residual common-mode signal will be converted to
differential by the pair imbalance, typically 40-45 dB at ADSL frequencies, giving best
POTS common mode to LINE differential isolation of 70-80 dB. Hence there is no need
for the differential isolation to exceed this figure. 70 dB attenuation would reduce a
100 V ring-trip transient to of order 30 mV. This is probably just sufficient to prevent
overload in an ADSL receiver front end ADC.
Alternatively the attenuation required of ISDN outband signals can be considered; it can
be shown that only about 38 dB attenuation of ISDN outband signals is needed to reduce
its level at 138 kHz to be comparable with NEXT from HDSL/ADSL NEXT.
Similarly ADSL outband (low frequency) signals only require some 10-15dB attenuation
before becoming comparable with ISDN NEXT.
It seems that the requirements are most restrictive for attenuation of POTS transients into
ADSL.

[8]

Balance (LCL) at the LINE port should be 40-45 dB so as not to degrade network balance
performance.

[9]

Maximum 50 Ohm dc path resistance between POTS and LINE, so as not to degrade
POTS signalling performance.

[10]

Withstand 120 Vpk ringing plus 50 V battery feed on POTS port OR 140 Vdc power
feed. (Determines component ratings).

[11]

Withstand 100 mA current flow between LINE and POTS ports for line power feeding.
(Determines inductor sizes and ratings).
1050 Ohm

320 Ohm

230 nF

Figure 2 Zm, POTS reference impedance

3.

MULTIPLE REFERENCE IMPEDANCES

A splitter low pass filter that must pass telephony in some cases and ISDN in other cases will ideally have reference
impedance close to Zm while passing telephony and close to 135 Ohms while passing ISDN.
It is possible to modify the reference impedance of a filter by active means (eg relay contacts), but any fixed linear
filter only has one reference impedance. The only way to have multiple reference impedances would be to switch
filters or filter elements between the two cases. We certainly want to avoid doing this manually, and doing it
automatically would be form of active filter, which is also undesirable.

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What is needed is a compromise. A route to such a compromise lies in the fact that the telephony signals only cover a
very small part of the passband of the required low pass filter if it is to pass ISDN. This means that the delay of the
filter will be less significant at telephony frequencies than at ISDN frequencies. So if a filter is designed with a
reference impedance of 135 Ohms it will work well for ISDN, and if its corner frequency is high enough (and hence
its delay low enough) the mismatches introduced for telephony will be even less significant.

4.

EXPERIMENTAL SPLITTER DESIGN

A large number of topology and parametric options were experimented in order to arrive at a splitter design which
approached the requirements of section 2 as nearly as possible.
It was concluded that the best compromise would use 6th order elliptic filters with fADSLmin set to 172 kHz. As can be
seen from the following section this meets all the requirements with the possible exception of stopband attenuation.
More will be said about design compromises in section 6.

5.

EXPERIMENTAL SPLITTER PERFORMANCE

Figure 3 shows the simulated insertion losses between the various ports for the splitter. The flat low pass response is
between POTS and LINE in 135 Ohms, the rippled low pass response between POTS and LINE in Zm, the highpass
response is between ADSL and LINE in 100 Ohms.
Cursors are placed at 4 kHz, 80 kHz and 172 kHz. The respective passbands are low loss and flat, while the
respective stopbands give high attenuation, generally above 57 dB. Also included are isolation responses between
POTS and ADSL. These show some reduction in isolation at transition band frequencies.

Figure 3 Experimental splitter insertion losses, stopband

Figure 4 shows the same plot on an expanded vertical scale. This clearly shows the passband response has acceptable
low attenuation and ripple.

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Figure 4 Experimental splitter insertion losses, passband

Figure 5 Experimental splitter return losses

Figure 5 shows the return losses at each port. An additional cursor is given at the 18 dB requirement level.
The two upper curves on the LHS are the return loss at the POTS and LINE ports and vice-versa with the other port
terminated in 135 Ohms as used by ISDN. These maintain 18 dB RL to over 80 kHz.

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The two lower curves on the LHS (nearly overlapping each other) are for the same ports terminated in Zm. These
maintain over 18 dB RL to over 4 kHz.
The two curves on the RHS show the return losses at the LINE and ADSL ports when the other is terminated in
100 Ohms for ADSL. 18 dB return loss is maintained here from 172 kHz upward.

5.1.

EFFECT ON SERVICES

Some prototypes of the splitter have been constructed.

They have parametric performance very close to that predicted above.
The splitters have been tested with both POTS and ISDN and have been found to have very little effect on
performance. Telephony loudness and sidetone are little affected. ISDN reach is reduced only insignificantly
(although this has been tried with only one type of ISDN transceiver).
At the time of writing the high-pass path of the spitter has not been tested with any ADSL systems.

6.

FURTHER REQUIREMENTS DISCUSSION

The requirements for an ADSL over (POTS or ISDN) splitter are very challenging to meet. The experimental design
presented here fails to meet the target stopband attenuation, despite the fact that it has a rather high fADSLmin of 172
kHz, although all other requirements are met.
It might be assumed that the requirements will easily be met by a splitter based on higher order filters but this is not
the case. Higher order filters by definition have more filter stages and each stage adds to the total shunt
capacitance/delay in the low pass filter. This shunt capacitance/delay is the main constraining factor on POTS return
loss given that the reference impedance for the splitter is constrained by the need for a good ISDN return loss at 135
Ohms.
Figure 5 shows that the POTS Zm return loss is falling at about 4 dB/octave at the crucial 4 kHz corner. As this is a
key design limiting factor a lower fADSLmin might well be achieved by allowing a relaxation in this requirement by 23 dB at 4 kHz (ie lowering the requirement to 15-16 dB) , tapering off to no relaxation at 3 kHz. This would have
some adverse effect on telephony performance, but perhaps acceptable in the vast majority of cases.
The other design requirement which is crucial but where the requirements are rather debatable is in the area of
stopband attenuation. The requirement set in section 2 was based on an argument that POTS transients needed to be
attenuated at least until they will no longer cause overload in the ADSL ADC/front end. However, it is apparent that
there is nothing magic about this threshold. Transients of this order will already be causing large error bursts in the
underlying ADSL transmission system (before Reed Solomon error correction/interleaving). If the ADSL ADC/front
end is designed to cope with transient overloads without damage and with the best possible recovery time then
allowing such overload will merely result in a perhaps somewhat larger error burst. In many cases this error burst
will still be correctable so that there is no resultant effect. In this case, it may be possible to lower the stopband
requirement still further. The next (and rather harder) limit is set by the need to attenuate ISDN outband noise
entering the ADSL receiver. In this case, the attenuation needed is only of the order 38 dB. Such a compromise
would move the requirements further toward the ADSL-lite model of splitterless ADSL.
If these compromises could be accepted it might well be possible to design a splitter with an fADSLmin much lower than
172 kHz.
A problem arises however from the alternative 4B3T implementations of ISDN used in Germany. If a splitter is to be
compatible with such a form of ISDN a higher low pass filter passband corner frequency may be required. By analogy
with 2B1Q the required 100% excess bandwidth would set the low pass passband edge at 120kHz. This will clearly
make the design of the splitter much more difficult.

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REFERENCES

[1]

ANSI, Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) Metallic Interface, ANSI Standard
T1.413, Issue 1, August 1995. Published in 1996.

[2]

John Cook and Phil Sheppard, ADSL and VADSL Splitter Design and Telephony
Performance, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Vol. 13, No 9,
December 1995.

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