Brazil to migrate thousand of radio stations from AM to FM
At the 2015 NAB Show GatesAir demonstrated an FM over-the-air system The Flexiva FAX designed for broadcasting on 76-88.1 MHz (below the regular 88-108 MHz FM band). The launch of an expanded FM band appears imminent, said Rich Redmond, chief product officer GatesAir. Our customers can be assured that we’ll be ready with systems as receivers for the proposed expanded FM band hit the market.
The Flexiva FAX transmitter family includes a low-band FM high-power amplifier, which maintains signal quality while broadcasting as much as 12 MHz lower than the traditional FM band. This system is tailored specifically to the migration of AM (medium wave) radio broadcasters in Brazil to a proposed expanded FM radio band (currently analogue TV Channel 5-6). GatesAir’s transmission architecture simplifies frequency, filtering and amplification changes required to broadcast within the expanded FM band, without financially burdening the broadcaster.
The migration is very important for the huge Brazilian radio market, with more than 4.500 commercial radio stations (including 1,800 AM) — and 4.000 community radio stations with 200 million conventional AM/FM receivers. On-air digital radio DRM30, DRM+ and HD Radio have been tested in Brazil but the pace of developments has been slow lately. The DAB system is not on the Brazilian agenda.
The expanded Brazilian FM-band is similar to the Japanese standard FM band. In Europe broadcasting is allocated in the range 47-68 MHz (VHF Band I) but this space is not used for radio at the moment. In earlier days the range 66 to 74 MHz was used by the Soviet Union another Warszawa pact countries except the DDR.
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