The National Weather Service recently completed an Operational Acceptance Test (OAT) on the use of satellite data compression and Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB-S) on the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) Satellite Broadcasting Network (SBN). This was part of a series of steps designed to increase the data sent on the SBN to the field sites. Necessary software changes were added to previous AWIPS releases as well as the Linux upgrades to the Communication Processors (CP) and the addition of the Linux Pre-processors (PX) in preparation for this activity. The OAT involved 18 test sites and 3 additional control sites. In this OAT, the reliability and timeliness of products passing through the SBN communication network were assessed, and the impact of the new hardware in the system was monitored. The Product Availability Monitoring System (PAMS) was used to monitor roughly one million products per day flowing from the Network Control Facility (NCF) to each field site. This paper summarizes the results of the OAT and provides a performance comparison between the old and the new product transmission techniques.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Weather Service.