Transmission Chain

Summary

This is where you will find info about the Transmission Chain at URY, especially where it relates to Computing. The line between Engineering and Computing is blury, so this guide should be useful to both teams.

The section should give you at least a general jist of what is connected to what, with helpful information explaining why and where to look for more information/poking around. Hopefully it should be understandable to all

In essence, URY has a hybrid digital-analogue broadcast chain. This is for legacy and convenience reasons, with more parts of the chain becoming digital over time.

FM and DAB

FM is an analogue system, where we’re the only station on 88.3 MHz in this area (well, apart from when you pick up Radio 2). It varies the frequency (frequency modulation, aka FM) slightly off 88.3 to encode the audio wave into the signal.

DAB is a digital system (Digital Audio Broadcasting), where us and other stations get combined together into a digital signal, and broadcast together. People then pick up that digital signal, and then you can listen to any of the stations on it. It’s better quality audio, because it has error correction built into the digital signal, so the audio can be corrected post transmission. Although, on a technicality, there is a frequency for this signal, you don’t find the frequency like you do on an analogue radio, your radio will scan all the DAB frequencies to see what stations it can find, then you’re able to select one of those. For completists, the frequency of the York multiplex is Block 8B, or 197.648 MHz. Our audio is encoded in HE-AAC at 48 kb/s, which gives us a good quality stereo signal.