Elect
Telecommunications
Area of practice · Donald W. Parnell, PE
Cable-television network mapping and amplifier optimization, optical-transport equipment diagramming, and substation communications and SCADA design.
Cable Networks
Cable-television plant mapping and amplifier optimization
Through PinTech of Wilmington, North Carolina, Mr. Parnell mapped telecommunications networks for Time Warner Cable. The work was performed during the period when cable systems were being rebuilt from all-coaxial trunk-and-feeder plant to hybrid fiber-coaxial architecture, with fiber carried to optical nodes and coaxial distribution running from each node through cascades of line amplifiers to the subscriber taps. His mapping documented the location and configuration of nodes, trunk and line amplifiers, power supplies, and passive devices along the plant, and supported the integration of line-amplification and optimization hardware, in which amplifier spacing, cascade depth, and signal levels are set to hold the system within its performance limits.
Optical Transport
Fiber-optic and DWDM equipment diagramming
At Northern Telecom in the Raleigh area, later Nortel, Mr. Parnell produced diagrams of telecommunications equipment, sensors, and devices, including dense wavelength division multiplexing equipment and its associated fiber-optic componentry. Nortel’s Research Triangle Park operations were a major center for its optical-networking business, and DWDM, which carries many independent wavelengths on a single fiber, was the core of that product line through the 1990s. The diagramming documented equipment configuration, optical paths, and the multiplexers, amplifiers, transponders, and monitoring devices that make up an optical transport system.
Utility Communications
Substation control-house communications and SCADA
In substation control-house design, Mr. Parnell worked on the communications systems that connect a substation to the utility control center. This included supervisory control and data acquisition, in which a remote terminal unit in the control house gathers breaker status, alarms, and metering and carries operator commands back to the switchgear, together with the inline communications and signal carriers that transport those circuits: power-line carrier coupled onto the transmission conductors, and fiber, microwave, or leased telephone circuits for telemetry and protective-relay signaling. The control-house layouts placed this equipment with the protection panels, batteries, and communications terminations it serves.
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Donald W. Parnell, PE | North Carolina PE No. 33878