'Scotty can Ya hear me..................?'
The Drive for New Radio
Crystal Clear Satellite Sounds
Reach Cruising Altitudes
An in-dashboard satellite radio receiver.
With new radio broadcasting technology,
drivers will be able to tune into AM, FM
and subscription-based satellite radio
programming. (Sirius Radio)
By Melanie Axelrod
Oct. 5 — Don’t touch that dial.
Thanks to something new in
the air, you might not have to
channel surf in your car ever
again.
Where radio radically changed the
way the world received news and
information in the 1920s and ’30s, satellite radio promises to
extend the range of what its proponents say will be virtually
static-free programming to anywhere in the continental
United States. Aiming to offer more than 200 new ad-free
channels, two companies are hoping their new satellite radio
services will do for radio what DirecTV does for television …
but in both the home and the car. (DirecTV is an investor in
XM Radio.)
“The goal is to offer customers new choice and diversity
… and open up the radio market to new national, creative
channels,” said Vicki Stearn, a spokesperson for XM Radio,
based in Washington.
XM Radio and New York-based Sirius Satellite Radio plan
to roll out their competing new
services sometime next year.
Programming will include nearly
all formats from sports to talk to
weather to music — classical,
rock&roll, jazz, you name it. The
subscription-based services will
deliver commercial free shows,
which should follow you
wherever you roam because
though both companies will sell
home receivers, their prime
target is the car. And while the
satellite technology is not new
per se, getting a steady signal to
hit a small antenna that’s
constantly in motion is a fresh
technical challenge.
“The moving vehicle part of it isn’t as challenging as …
getting the signal to a small antenna,” said Stearns.
Not Your Father’s Radio
Satellite distribution of radio and television programming is
standard in the broadcast world. Networks such as ABC, CBS
and NBC uplink programs daily to satellites so that affiliate
TV and radio networks can downlink them for transmission
to local audiences. Such signals to and from a satellite are
scrambled or encoded and can only be unscrambled or
decoded with the correct equipment.
XM and Sirius Radio will work similarly. Each will beam a
combination of original and syndicated programming to
orbitting communications and terrestrial satellites, which will
send out signals to the satellite radio receivers. These
receivers, somewhat akin to AM/FM tuners, are made up of
two parts: an “active” antenna and a receiving module.
The antenna is active because it basically looks for
available signals to pick up from satellites it recognizes.
When it finds them, it amplifies them, filters out any
accompanying noise and interference, and then sends them
to the receiver, where most of the real work is done. En
route to the receiver, the signals are converted from analog
to digital. Once in the digital realm, they are analyzed for
quality, and then processed and combined to produce the
best digital “image” of the sound. The receiver also decrypts
the signals and finally converts them back to analog audio,
which can be sent to the radio’s speakers so you can hear it.
Two Companies, Two Methods
The receiving end is virtually the same for both companies,
but the satellite configurations are different: XM Radio will
use two satellites, and Sirius will use a combination three.
XM Radio’s two satellites — appropriately dubbed “XM
Rock” and “XM Roll” — form what is called a conventional,
geostationary orbit. This means the satellites are always
positioned over the same spot on Earth Aligned with the
equator and angled northward toward the U.S., the satellites
travel at the same pace as the earth’s rotatation, taking
approximately 24 hours for to orbit the Earth.
Sirius uses a different, slightly more complicated
approach with its three-satellite constellation.
In this configuration, one of the satellites travels at the
traditional, geostationary pattern at the equator while the
other two travel at orbits that are considered “elliptical
orbits, ” or at a plane that is askew to the equator. The
company hopes the extra satellite and the different orbits will
help reduce the possibility of interference, according to Mark
Kalman, vice president of the national broadcast studio for
Sirius.
Both configurations are optimized to theoretically provide
satellite radio subscribers service in any part of the U.S.
without interruption due to static, location or commercials.
“You should be able to travel from New York to Los Angeles
and still be able to listen to the same channel,” said Kalman.
In other words, there’s no driving out of range of a
particular “station.” That would be in a theoretical, perfect
world. The real world, however, poses threats from
weather, tall buildings and mountains that can potentially
interfere with broadcasts.
To remedy the interference caused by tall structures,
both Sirius and XM Radio are supplementing their satellite
coverage with terrestrial transmitters, called ground
repeaters, in major metropolitan areas such as New York,
Chicago and San Francisco. If the satellite radio antenna is
blocked by a skyscraper, it should pick up signals from one of
the ground repeaters.
What’s On
Several electronics companies such as Motorola, Pioneer,
and Sharp have teamed up with Sirius and XM Radio to
develop the satellite receivers, which won’t look much
different from the analog and digital AM/FM tuners that are
in cars today. One small change will be an additional button
for a digital radio option.
As an automobile option, the units are expected to cost
somewhere between $150-200, on top of a monthly
subscription rate of about $10, said Kalman. But, he added,
car makers such as Daimler-Chrysler and BMW plan to offer
satellite radio receivers as standard equipment by sometime
next year.
Motorola, which plans to launch its iRadio satellite radio
receiver sometime in 2001, plans to incorporate this form of
entertainment technology with their telematics systems, says
Brian Gratch, director of marketing of the Telebmatics
Communications Group at Motorola Corp. Telematics refers
to in-vehicle telecommunications such as cellular and global
positioning system units.
But satellite radios might eventually travel further than
even the open road.
“I see satellite radio as ‘Walkmen’ in the future, and
there’s certainly the possibility of having this service available
on the airlines,” said Kalman. |
