[BC] Another Method for Digital Radio Broadcasting

[David L. Hershberger]

Colleagues,

There is another way to do digital radio broadcasting - use DTV
transmitters. At NAB earlier this year, Rohde & Schwarz and Samsung
demonstrated "Advanced VSB" (A-VSB) coding and reception for ATSC digital
television transmitters. What this does is to form specially coded highly
robust packets within a DTV signal that can be received MOBILE and at a much
lower SNR than the rest of the signal. The thinking was that these packets
could be used for low resolution mobile TV on hand-held receivers or in
cars. Only a portion of a DTV signal would be allocated to A-VSB packets;
the rest of the signal would carry the normal ATSC signal. Only the A-VSB
packets can be received mobile, and the rest of the signal (conventional
8VSB) can only be received at fixed locations.

At NAB, I had a chat with Mike Simon of Rohde & Schwarz. I told Mike that
these packets could also be used for radio broadcasting. Mike thought that
was a good idea, and one that they had not considered.

A-VSB could be used to piggyback a dozen or more radio programs on a single
DTV channel, without having a major effect on the DTV signal.

Here's a link to an article by Doug Lung which includes some information on
A-VSB:

http://www.tvtechnology.com/features/On-RF/2006.06.14-f_Doug_Lung.shtml

I've written an article for Radio World Engineering Extra about this
concept, and it appears on page 4 of the current issue (December 13). I
don't think my article is online anywhere.

Comments are welcome.

Dave Hershberger