Radio

Radio is the wireless transmission of signals, by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of light.

Uses of radio

Many of radio's early uses were maritime, for sending telegraphic messages using Morse code between ships and land. One of the earliest users included the Japanese Navy scouting the Russian fleet during the Battle of Tsushima in 1901. One of the most memorable uses of marine telegraphy was during the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912, including communications between operators on the sinking ship and nearby vessels, and communications to shore stations listing the survivors.

Related Topics:
Morse code - Battle of Tsushima - RMS ''Titanic'' - 1912

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Radio was used to pass on orders and communications between armies and navies on both sides in World War I; Germany used radio communications for diplomatic messages once its submarine cables were cut by the British. The United States passed on President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points to Germany via radio during the war.

Related Topics:
World War I - Woodrow Wilson's - Fourteen Points

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Broadcasting began to become feasible in the 1920s, with the widespread introduction of radio receivers, particularly in Europe and the United States. Besides broadcasting, point-to-point broadcasting, including telephone messages and relays of radio programs, became widespread in the 1920s and 1930s.

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Another use of radio in the pre-war years was the development of detecting and locating aircraft and ships by the use of radar (RAdio Detecting And Ranging).

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Today, radio takes many forms, including wireless networks, mobile communications of all types, as well as radio broadcasting. Read more about radio's history.

Related Topics:
Wireless network - Mobile communication - Broadcasting - History

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Before the advent of television, commercial radio broadcasts included not only news and music, but dramas, comedies, variety shows, and many other forms of entertainment. Radio was unique among dramatic presentation that it used only sound. For more, see radio programming.

Related Topics:
Television - Radio programming

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There are a number of uses of radio:

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Audio

• AM broadcast radio sends music and voice in the Medium Frequency (MF?0.300 MHz to 3 MHz) radio spectrum. AM radio uses amplitude modulation, in which louder sounds at the microphone causes wider fluctuations in the transmitter power while the transmitter frequency remains unchanged. Transmissions are affected by static because lightning and other sources of radio add their radio waves to the ones from the transmitter.
• FM broadcast radio sends music and voice, with higher fidelity than AM radio. In frequency modulation, louder sounds at the microphone cause the transmitter frequency to fluctuate farther, the transmitter power stays constant. FM is transmitted in the Very High Frequency (VHF?30 MHz to 300 MHz) radio spectrum. FM requires more radio frequency space than AM and there are more frequencies available at higher frequencies, so there can be more stations, each sending more information. Another effect is that shorter VHF radio waves act more like light, travelling in straight lines, hence the reception range is generally limited to about 50-100 miles. During unusual upper atmospheric conditions, FM signals are occasionally reflected back towards the Earth by the ionosphere, resulting in Long distance FM reception. FM receivers are subject to the capture effect, which causes the radio to only receive the strongest signal when multiple signals appear on the same frequency. FM receivers are relatively immune to lightning and spark interference.
• FM Subcarrier services are secondary signals transmitted "piggyback" along with the main program. Special receivers are required to utilize these services. Analog channels may contain alternative programming, such as reading services for the blind, background music or stereo sound signals. In some extremely crowded metropolitan areas, the subchannel program might be an alternate foreign language radio program for various ethnic groups. Subcarriers can also transmit digital data, such as station identification, the current song's name, web addresses, or stock quotes. In some countries, FM radios automatically retune themselves to the same channel in a different district by using sub-bands.
• Aviation voice radios use VHF AM. AM is used so that multiple stations on the same channel can be received. (Use of FM would result in stronger stations blocking out reception of weaker stations due to FM's capture effect). Aircraft fly high enough that their transmitters can be received hundreds of miles (kilometres) away, even though they are using VHF.
• Marine voice radios can use AM in the shortwave High Frequency (HF?3 MHz to 30 MHz) radio spectrum for very long ranges or narrowband FM in the VHF spectrum for much shorter ranges.
• Government, police, fire and commercial voice services use narrowband FM on special frequencies. Fidelity is sacrificed to use a smaller range of radio frequencies, usually five kilohertz of deviation (5 thousand cycles per second), rather than the 75 used by FM broadcasts and 25 used by TV sound.
• Civil and military HF (high frequency) voice services use shortwave radio to contact ships at sea, aircraft and isolated settlements. Most use single sideband voice (SSB), which uses less bandwidth than AM. SSB sounds like ducks quacking on an AM radio. Viewed as a graph of frequency versus power, an AM signal shows power where the frequencies of the voice add and subtract with the main radio frequency. SSB cuts the bandwidth in half by suppressing the carrier and (usually) lower sideband. This also makes the transmitter about three times more powerful, because it doesn't need to transmit the unused carrier and sideband.
• TETRA, Terrestrial Trunked Radio is a digital cell phone system for military, police and ambulances.
• Commercial services such as XM and Sirius offer digital Satellite radio.

Telephony

• Cell phones transmit to a local cell transmitter/receiver site, which connects to the public service telephone network through an optic fiber or microwave radio. When the phone leaves the cell radio's area, the central computer switches the phone to a new cell. Cell phones originally used FM, but now most use various digital encodings.
• Satellite phones come in two types: INMARSAT and Iridium. Both types provide world-wide coverage. INMARSAT uses geosynchronous satellites, with aimed high-gain antennas on the vehicles. Iridium provides cell phones, except the cells are satellites in orbit.

Video

• Television sends the picture as AM, and the sound as FM, on the same radio signal.
• Digital television encodes three bits as eight strengths of AM signal. The bits are sent out-of-order to reduce the effect of bursts of radio noise. A Reed-Solomon error correction code lets the receiver detect and correct errors in the data. Although any data could be sent, the standard is to use MPEG-2 for video, and five CD-quality (44.1 kHz) audio channels (center, left, right, left-back and right back). With all this, it takes only half the bandwidth of an analog TV signal because the video data is compressed.

Navigation

• All satellite navigation systems use satellites with precision clocks. The satellite transmits its position, and the time of the transmission. The receiver listens to four satellites, and can figure its position as being on a line that is tangent to a spherical shell around each satellite, determined by the time-of-flight of the radio signals from the satellite. A computer in the receiver does the math.
• Loran systems also used time-of-flight radio signals, but from radio stations on the ground.
• VOR systems (used by aircraft), have two transmitters. A directional transmitter scans or spins its signal like a lighthouse at a fixed rate. When the directional transmitter is facing north, an omnidirectional transmitter pulses. An aircraft can get readings from two VORs, and locate its position at the intersection of the two beams.
• Radio direction-finding is the oldest form of radio navigation. Before 1960 navigators used movable loop antennas to locate commercial AM stations near cities. In some cases they used marine radiolocation beacons, which share a range of frequencies just above AM radio with amateur radio operators.

Radar

• Radar detects things at a distance by bouncing radio waves off them. The delay caused by the echo measures the distance. The direction of the beam determines the direction of the reflection. The polarization and frequency of the return can sense the type of surface.
• Navigational radars scan a wide area two to four times per minute. They use very short waves that reflect from earth and stone. They are common on commercial ships and long-distance commercial aircraft
• General purpose radars generally use navigational radar frequencies, but modulate and polarize the pulse so the receiver can determine the type of surface of the reflector. The best general-purpose radars distinguish the rain of heavy storms, as well as land and vehicles. Some can superimpose sonar data and map data from GPS position.
• Search radars scan a wide area with pulses of short radio waves. They usually scan the area two to four times a minute. Sometimes search radars use the doppler effect to separate moving vehicles from clutter.
• Targeting radars use the same principle as search radar but scan a much smaller area far more often, usually several times a second or more.
• Weather radars resemble search radars, but use radio waves with circular polarization and a wavelength to reflect from water droplets. Some weather radar use the doppler to measure wind speeds.

Emergency services

• emergency position-indicating rescue beacons (EPIRBs), emergency locating transmitters or personal locator beacons are small radio transmitters that satellites can use to locate a person or vehicle needing rescue. Their purpose is to help rescue people in the first day, when survival is most likely. There are several types, with widely-varying performance.

Data (digital radio)

• The oldest form of digital broadcast was spark gap telegraphy, used by pioneers such as Marconi. By pressing the key, the operator could send messages in Morse code by energizing a rotating commutating spark gap. The rotating commutator produced a tone in the receiver, where a simple spark gap would produce a hiss, indistinguishable from static. Spark gap transmitters are now illegal, because their transmissions span several hundred megahertz. This is very wasteful of both radio frequencies and power.
• The next advance was continuous wave telegraphy, or CW, in which a pure radio frequency, produced by a vacuum tube electronic oscillator was switched on and off by a key. A receiver with a local oscillator would "heterodyne" with the pure radio frequency, creating a whistle-like audio tone. CW uses less than 100Hz of bandwidth. CW is still used, these days primarily by amateur radio operators (hams). Strictly, on-off keying of a carrier should be known as "Interrupted Continuous Wave" or ICW.
• Radio teletypes usually operate on short-wave (HF) and are much loved by the military because they create written information without a skilled operator. They send a bit as one of two tones. Groups of five or seven bits become a character printed by a teletype. From about 1925 to 1975, radio teletype was how most commercial messages were sent to less developed countries. These are still used by the military and weather services.
• Aircraft use a 1200 Baud radioteletype service over VHF to send their ID, altitude and position, and get gate and connecting-flight data.
• Microwave dishes on satellites, telephone exchanges and TV stations usually use quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). QAM sends data by changing both the phase and the amplitude of the radio signal. Engineers like QAM because it packs the most bits into a radio signal. Usually the bits are sent in "frames" that repeat. A special bit pattern is used to locate the beginning of a frame.
• Systems that need reliability, or that share their frequency with other services may use "corrected orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing" or COFDM. COFDM breaks a digital signal into as many as several hundred slower subchannels. The digital signal is often sent as QAM on the subchannels. Modern COFDM systems use a small computer to make and decode the signal with digital signal processing, which is more flexible and far less expensive than older systems that implemented separate electronic channels. COFDM resists fading and ghosting because the narrow-channel QAM signals can be sent slowly. An adaptive system, or one that sends error-correction codes can also resist interference, because most interference can affect only a few of the QAM channels. COFDM is used for WiFi, some cell phones, Digital Radio Mondiale, Eureka 147, and many other local area network, digital TV and radio standards.
• Most new radio systems are digital, see also:Digital TV, Satellite Radio, Digital Audio Broadcasting.

Heating

Radio-frequency energy generated for heating of objects is generally not intended to radiate outside of the generating equipment, to prevent interferance with other radio signals.

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• Microwave ovens use intense radio waves to heat food. (Note: It is a common misconception that the radio waves are tuned to the resonant frequency of water molecules. The microwave frequencies used are actually about a factor of 10 below the resonant frequency.)
• Diathermy equipment is used in surgery for sealing of blood vessels.
• Induction furnaces are used for melting metal for casting.

Mechanical Force

• Tractor beams: Radio waves exert small electrostatic and magnetic forces. These are enough to perform station-keeping in microgravity environments.
• Conceptually, Spacecraft propulsion: Radiation pressure from intense radio waves has been proposed as a propulsion method for an interstellar probe called Starwisp. Since the waves are long, the probe could be a very light-weight metal mesh, and thus achieve higher accelerations than if it were a solar sail.

Other

• Amateur radio is a hobby where enthusiasts who purchase or build their own equipment and use radio for their own enjoyment. They may also provide an emergency and public-service radio service. This has been of great use, saving lives in many instances. Radio amateurs are able to use frequencies in a large number of narrow bands throughout the radio spectrum. Radio amateurs use all forms of encoding, including obsolete and experimental ones. Several forms of radio were pioneered by radio amateurs and later became commercially important, including FM, single-sideband AM, digital packet radio and satellite repeaters.
• Personal radio services such as Citizens' Band Radio, Family Radio Service, Multi-Use Radio Service and others exist in North America to provide simple, (usually) short range communication for individuals and small groups, without the overhead of licensing. Similar services exist in other parts of the world.
• Wireless energy transfer: A number of schemes have been proposed that transmit power using microwaves, and the technique has been demonstrated. (See Microwave power transmission). These schemes include, for example, solar power stations in orbit beaming energy down to terrestrial users.
• Radio remote control: Use of radio waves to transmit control data to a remote object as in some early forms of guided missile, some early TV remotes and a range of model boats, cars and aeroplanes. Large industrial remote-controlled equipment such as cranes and switching locomotives now usually use digital radio techniques to ensure safety and reliability.