03-01-2006 - Nautel to present a White Paper on Improvements to FM and IBOC Signal Quality through the Use of Pre-equalization as part of "Making Radio Work - Part II" workshop at NAB2006

Making Radio Work - Part II

April 26, 2006 • 2:00PM - 5:30PM

Las Vegas Convention Center S227

Improvements to FM and IBOC Signal Quality through the Use of Pre-equalization

April 26, 2006 • 3:30PM - 4:00PM

The FM signal suffers degradation due to bandwidth limitations and poor group delay at many sites where combiners/filters are used as part of a multi channel antenna system. The addition of the IBOC signal into the analog transmission path has further increased bandwidth requirements. Analog audio performance including stereo separation, distortion and synchronous AM noise all degrade through a bandwidth limited channel while the digital signal suffers from an increase in bit error rate.
The bandwidth and group delay characteristics are constant and can be measured. Improvements to the ’on air’ signal quality can be achieved by pre-equalizing at the transmitter for these factors. This paper will discuss the problem and propose a solution available with current hardware and software. A field study will be included showing the benefits of pre-equalization.

Presenter: Michael Woods, FM Project Leader, Nautel Ltd.