Technical Articles

I recently received the January issue of Broadcast Engineering Magazine. I love this magazine. These guys are looking at the stuff I am. I am constantly learning something new! Everyone should get the magazine or follow it online. So, I…

Examining MPEG & FEC Part 2: Signal Processing ALL ABOARD! Let’s take a ride on the signal train. Our journey ultimately begins at the source provider, but for out purposes well start at “Mid-Air Station” and see what kind of…

Much of what we've been told about digital systems is only partially true. When digital is described as "all or nothing", this is a generalization based on the upper performance capabilities of digital systems. In fact, most of the things…

The bit error rate of a digital system is the number of errors of bits in relation to time. The bit error rate (BER) is the digital expression of the signal quality or signal-to-noise ratio. BER is digital signal quality and it depends on…

RF Front End Did you know that every digital system has what is termed as an “RF Front End”? They do! The RF front end refers to the signal reception portion of anycommunication system – both analog and digital systems. The RF front…

Signal Quality is a factor with DTV reception!! I have spent literally the last 4 months doing field strength tests in our market with some very interesting discoveries about the DTV signal itself. It seems signal quality is a BIG…

Originally Posted by JER Its been my general feeling for quite a while now that for many people reception problems are usually related more to signal quality than signal strength. The above post by FoxTV indicates how complicated the…

This article written by me for our stations website. It is rather lengthy, but it has a place in this forum. It also contains references to our broadcast area and its terrain, but it applies to other areas of the country as well. Digital…

Combining a UHF and VHF antenna w & w/o amps To combine them without amps is pretty simple. If on a common mast most often the UHF antenna is the higher one or on top, but not always. If the VHF station is much farther away like my…

UVSJ vs Combiner/Splitters for Combining Antennas Note, I am not covering how to stack antennas in this thread, just how to use the combining hardware. First what are they? ------------ UVSJ is a small device to combine a UHF…