Radio

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For other uses, see Radio (disambiguation).

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

Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space. It does not require a medium of transport. Information is carried by systematically changing (modulating) some property of the radiated waves, such as their amplitude or their frequency. When radio waves pass an electrical conductor, the oscillating fields induce an alternating current in the conductor. This can be detected and transformed into sound or other signals that carry information.

The word 'radio' is used to describe this phenomenon, and television and radio transmissions are classed as radio frequency emissions. Contrary to popular belief, cell phone transmissions are classed as microwave frequency emissions.


Contents

[edit] Etymology

Originally, radio was called 'wireless telegraphy', which was shortened to 'wireless'. The prefix radio- in the sense of wireless transmission was first recorded in the word radioconductor, coined by the French physicist Edouard Branly in 1897 and based on the verb to radiate (in Latin "radius" means "spoke of a wheel, beam of light, ray"). 'Radio' as a noun is said to have been coined by advertising expert Waldo Warren (White 1944). The word appears in a 1907 article by Lee de Forest, was adopted by the United States Navy in 1912 and became common by the time of the first commercial broadcasts in the United States in the 1920s. (The noun 'broadcasting' itself came from an agricultural term, meaning 'scattering seeds'.) The American term was then adopted by other languages in Europe and Asia, although British Commonwealth countries retained the term 'wireless' until the mid-20th century. In Japanese, the term 'wireless' is the basis for the term 'radio wave' although the term for the device that listens to radio waves is literally 'device for receiving sounds'.

In recent years the term 'wireless' has gained renewed popularity through the rapid growth of short range networking, e.g. WLAN ('Wireless Local Area Network'),WiFi, Bluetooth as well as mobile telephony, e.g. GSM and UMTS. Today, the term 'radio' often refers to the actual transceiver device or chip, whereas 'wireless' refers to the system and/or method used for radio communication. Hence one talks about radio transceivers and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), but about wireless devices and wireless sensor networks.

[edit] Invention

For more details on this topic, see invention of radio.

The identity of the original inventor of radio, at the time called wireless telegraphy, is contentious. Development from a laboratory demonstration to commercial utility spanned several decades and required the efforts of many practitioners. The controversy over who invented the radio, with the benefit of hindsight, can be broken down as follows:

  • In 1891, Nikola Tesla began wireless research. He developed means to reliably produce radio frequencies, publicly demonstrated the principles of radio, and transmitted long-distance signals. He obtained a U.S. patent for the invention of the radio, as defined as "wireless transmission of data."
  • Between 1893 and 1894, Roberto Landell de Moura, a Brazilian priest and scientist, conducted experiments. He did not publicize his achievement until 1900 but later obtained Brazilian and American patents.
  • Alexander Stepanovich Popov, in 1894, built his first radio receiver, which contained a coherer. Further refined as a lightning detector, he presented it to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society on May 7, 1895.
  • Guglielmo Marconi was an early radio experimenter. He realized the first long distance transmissions and founded the first commercial organization devoted to the development and use of radio

[edit] Brief History

For more details on this topic, see History of radio.

In 1893, in St. Louis, Missouri, Tesla made devices for his experiments with electricity. Addressing the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and the National Electric Light Association, he described and demonstrated in detail the principles of his work. [2] The descriptions contained all the elements that were later incorporated into radio systems before the development of the vacuum tube. He initially experimented with magnetic receivers, unlike the coherers (detecting devices consisting of tubes filled with iron filings which had been invented by Temistocle Calzecchi-Onesti at Fermo in Italy in 1884) used by Guglielmo Marconi and other early experimenters. [3].

In 1896, Marconi was awarded the British patent 12039, Improvements in transmitting electrical impulses and signals and in apparatus there-for, for radio. In 1897 he established the world's first radio station on the Isle of Wight, England. Marconi opened the world's first "wireless" factory in Hall Street, Chelmsford, England in 1898, employing around 50 people.

The next great invention was the vacuum tube detector, invented by a team of Westinghouse engineers. On Christmas Eve, 1906, Reginald Fessenden used a synchronous rotary-spark transmitter for the first radio program broadcast, from Brant Rock, Massachusetts. Ships at sea heard a broadcast that included Fessenden playing O Holy Night on the violin and reading a passage from the Bible. The first radio news program was broadcast August 31, 1920 by station 8MK in Detroit, Michigan. The first college radio station, 2ADD, renamed WRUC in 1940, began broadcasting October 14, 1920 from Union College, Schenectady, New York. The first regular entertainment broadcasts commenced in 1922 from the Marconi Research Centre at Writtle, near Chelmsford, England.

One of the first developments in the early 20th century (1900-1959) was that aircraft used commercial AM radio stations for navigation. This continued until the early 1960s when VOR systems finally became widespread (though AM stations are still marked on U.S. aviation charts). In the early 1930s, single sideband and frequency modulation were invented by amateur radio operators. By the end of the decade, they were established commercial modes. Radio was used to transmit pictures visible as television as early as the 1920s. Commercial television transmissions started in North America and Europe in the 1940s. In 1954, Regency introduced a pocket transistor radio, the TR-1, powered by a "standard 22.5 V Battery".

In 1960, Sony introduced its first transistorized radio, small enough to fit in a vest pocket, and able to be powered by a small battery. It was durable, because there were no tubes to burn out. Over the next 20 years, transistors replaced tubes almost completely except for very high-power uses. By 1963 color television was being regularly transmitted commercially, and the first (radio) communication satellite, TELSTAR, was launched. In the late 1960s, the U.S. long-distance telephone network began to convert to a digital network, employing digital radios for many of its links. In the 1970s, LORAN became the premier radio navigation system. Soon, the U.S. Navy experimented with satellite navigation, culminating in the invention and launch of the GPS constellation in 1987. In the early 1990s, amateur radio experimenters began to use personal computers with audio cards to process radio signals. In 1994, the U.S. Army and DARPA launched an aggressive, successful project to construct a software radio that could become a different radio on the fly by changing software. Digital transmissions began to be applied to broadcasting in the late 1990s.

[edit] Uses of radio

Many of radio early uses were maritime, for sending telegraphic messages using Morse code between ships and land. The earliest users included the Japanese Navy scouting the Russian fleet during the Battle of Tsushima in 1905. 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.

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. Broadcasting began from San Jose in 1909[4], and became 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. 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 Detection And Ranging).

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

[edit] Audio

A Fisher 500 AM/FM hi-fi receiver from 1959.
A Fisher 500 AM/FM hi-fi receiver from 1959.

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 the amplitude of the transmitted signal is made proportional to the sound amplitude captured (transduced) by the microphone while the transmitted frequency remains unchanged. Transmissions are affected by static and interference because lightning and other sources of radio that are transmitting at the same frequency add their amplitudes to the original transmitted amplitude. The most wattage an AM radio station is allowed to use is 50,000 watts and the only stations that can blast out signals this high were grandfathered in; these include WJR and CKLW.

FM broadcast radio sends music and voice with higher fidelity than AM radio. In frequency modulation, amplitude variation at the microphone cause the transmitter frequency to fluctuate. Because the audio signal modulates the frequency and not the amplitude, an FM signal is not subject to static and interference in the same way as AM signals. FM is transmitted in the Very High Frequency (VHF—30 MHz to 300 MHz) radio spectrum. VHF radio waves act more like light, traveling 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 kHz of deviation, rather than the 75 kHz used by FM broadcasts and 25 kHz 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. On an AM radio SSB sounds like ducks quacking. 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, WorldSpace and Sirius offer encrypted digital Satellite radio.

[edit] Telephony

Mobile phones transmit to a local cell site (transmitter/receiver) that ultimately connects to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) through an optic fiber or microwave radio and other network elements. When the mobile phone nears the edge of the cell site's radio coverage area, the central computer switches the phone to a new cell. Cell phones originally used FM, but now most use various digital modulation schemes. Satellite phones use satellites rather than cell towers to communicate. They 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 uses 66 Low Earth Orbit satellites as the cells.

[edit] Video

Television sends the picture as AM and the sound as FM, with the sound carrier a fixed frequency (4.5 MHz in the NTSC system) away from the video carrier. Analog television also uses a vestigial sideband on the video carrier to reduce the bandwidth required.

Digital television uses quadrature amplitude modulation. A Reed-Solomon error correction code adds redundant correction codes and allows reliable reception during moderate data loss. Although many current and future codecs can be sent in the MPEG-2 transport stream container format, as of 2006 most systems use a standard-definition format almost identical to DVD: MPEG-2 video in Anamorphic widescreen and MPEG layer 2 (MP2) audio. High-definition television is possible simply by using a higher-resolution picture, but H.264/AVC is being considered as a replacement video codec in some regions for its improved compression. With the compression and improved modulation involved, a single "channel" can contain a high-definition program and several standard-definition programs.

[edit] 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.

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. Loran systems also used time-of-flight radio signals, but from radio stations on the ground. VOR (Very High Frequency Omnidirectional Range), systems (used by aircraft), have an antenna array that transmits two signals simultaneously. A directional signal rotates like a lighthouse at a fixed rate. When the directional signal is facing north, an omnidirectional signal pulses. By measuring the difference in phase of these two signals, an aircraft can determine its bearing or radial from the station, thus establishing a line of position. An aircraft can get readings from two VOR and locate its position at the intersection of the two radials, known as a "fix." When the VOR station is collocated with DME (Distance Measuring Equipment), the aircraft can determine its bearing and range from the station, thus providing a fix from only one ground station. Such stations are called VOR/DMEs. The military operates a similar system of navaids, called TACANs, which are often built into VOR stations. Such stations are called VORTACs. Because TACANs include distance measuring equipment, VOR/DME and VORTAC stations are identical in navigation potential to civil aircraft.

[edit] Radar

Radar (Radio Detection And Ranging) 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.

[edit] Emergency services

Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacons (EPIRBs), Emergency Locating Transmitters (ELTs) or Personal Locator Beacons (PLBs) 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.

[edit] Data (digital radio)

Most new radio systems are digital, see also: Digital TV, Satellite Radio, Digital Audio Broadcasting. 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 (Continuous Wave), 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 100 Hz 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.

[edit] Heating

Radio-frequency energy generated for heating of objects is generally not intended to radiate outside of the generating equipment, to prevent interference with other radio signals. 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 ten below the resonant frequency.) Diathermy equipment is used in surgery for sealing of blood vessels. Induction furnaces are used for melting metal for casting.

[edit] Mechanical force

Tractor beams can use radio waves which 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 metal mesh, and thus achieve higher accelerations than if it were a solar sail.

[edit] Amateur radio service

Amateur Radio Station with multiple Receivers and Tranceivers
Amateur Radio Station with multiple Receivers and Tranceivers

Amateur radio is a hobby in which enthusiasts 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 licensed to use frequencies in a large number of narrow bands throughout the radio spectrum. They 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 (SSB), AM, digital packet radio and satellite repeaters. Some amateur frequencies may be disrupted by power-line internet service.

[edit] Unlicensed radio services

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. These radio services involve the use of handheld or mobile radios better known as "walkie-talkies".

[edit] Radio control (RC)

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 airplanes. Large industrial remote-controlled equipment such as cranes and switching locomotives now usually use digital radio techniques to ensure safety and reliability.

In Madison Square Garden, at the Electrical Exhibition of 1898, Nikola Tesla successfully demonstrated a radio-controlled boat.[5] He was awarded U.S. patent No. 613,809 for a "Method of and Apparatus for Controlling Mechanism of Moving Vessels or Vehicles." [6]

[edit] The electromagnetic spectrum

Radio waves are a form of electromagnetic radiation, created whenever a charged object (in normal radio transmission, an electron) accelerates with a frequency that lies in the radio frequency (RF) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. In radio, this acceleration is caused by an alternating current in an antenna. Radio frequencies occupy the range from a few tens of hertz to three hundred gigahertz, although commercially important uses of radio use only a small part of this spectrum.[1]

Radio spectrum
ELF SLF ULF VLF LF MF HF VHF UHF SHF EHF
3 Hz 30 Hz 300 Hz 3 kHz 30 kHz 300 kHz 3 MHz 30 MHz 300 MHz 3 GHz 30 GHz
30 Hz 300 Hz 3 kHz 30 kHz 300 kHz 3 MHz 30 MHz 300 MHz 3 GHz 30 GHz 300 GHz


Other types of electromagnetic radiation, with frequencies above the RF range, are microwave, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays. Since the energy of an individual photon of radio frequency is too low to remove an electron from an atom, radio waves are classified as non-ionizing radiation.

Electromagnetic spectrum and diagram of radio transmission of an audio signal. NB The colours used in this diagram of the electromagnetic spectrum are for decoration only. They do not correspond to the wavelengths and frequencies indicated on the scale.
Electromagnetic spectrum and diagram of radio transmission of an audio signal. NB The colours used in this diagram of the electromagnetic spectrum are for decoration only. They do not correspond to the wavelengths and frequencies indicated on the scale.
v • d • e
The Electromagnetic Spectrum
(Sorted by wavelength, short to long)
Gamma ray • X-ray • Ultraviolet • Visible spectrum • Infrared • Terahertz radiation • Microwave • Radio waves
Visible (optical) spectrum Violet • Blue • Green • Yellow • Orange • Red
Microwave spectrum
Radio spectrum EHF • SHF • UHF • VHF • HF • MF • LF • VLF • ULF • SLF • ELF
Wavelength designations

[edit] Other

Energy autarkic radio technology consists of a small radio transmitter powered by environmental energy (push of a button, temperature differences, light, vibrations, etc.). A number of schemes have been proposed for Wireless energy transfer. Various plans included transmitting 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.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ The Electromagnetic Spectrum, University of Tennessee, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

  • Aitkin Hugh G. J. The Continuous Wave: Technology and the American Radio, 1900-1932 (Princeton University Press, 1985).
  • Briggs Asa. The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom (Oxford University Press, 1961).
  • Ewbank Henry and Lawton Sherman P. Broadcasting: Radio and Television (Harper & Brothers, 1952).
  • Maclaurin W. Rupert. Invention and Innovation in the Radio Industry (The Macmillan Company, 1949).
  • Ray William B. FCC: The Ups and Downs of Radio-TV Regulation (Iowa State University Press, 1990).
  • Scannell, Paddy, and Cardiff, David. A Social History of British Broadcasting, Volume One, 1922-1939 (Basil Blackwell, 1991).
  • Schwoch James. The American Radio Industry and Its Latin American Activities, 1900-1939 (University of Illinois Press, 1990).
  • Sterling Christopher H. Electronic Media, A Guide to Trends in Broadcasting and Newer Technologies 1920-1983 (Praeger, 1984).
  • White Llewellyn. The American Radio (University of Chicago Press, 1947).

[edit] Primary sources

  • De Forest, Lee. Father of Radio: The Autobiography of Lee de Forest (1950).

[edit] External links

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