Radio and Television

A few decades ago, it would have been pure wishful thinking for an ordinary citizen tosee or listen to the rulers of the country. Any new pronouncements of the governmentwould have taken considerable time to reach the man in the streets. But today, ask a beggar in any city of India whether he has seen the face of the Indian Prime Minister or if s/he can he recognize his voice, the chances are grossly in favor of an affirmativereply. TV and radio have invaded the life of almost everybody, but they still remain themagic box for most of us. Most often we do not understand the processes involved or the instruments used. Let’s begin with the processes first.

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How are pictures formed on a television screen?

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Why are TV/radio signals not received by different places at different timesaccording to their distance from the transmitter?

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Do the high frequency radio waves interfere with each other?

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How does TV or radio catch different signals? Why does not the sound fromdifferent channels get mixed up?

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What is the difference between amplitude modulated and frequency modulated transmission?

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What are the components of a transmitter ? Which component decides its range?

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Why is TV transmission over long distances not possible?

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Why isn't the sound of a TV broadcast heard in radio?

Suppose you are standing in a closed room on the second floor of a buildingand you have to communicate to someone outside (maybe on the ground floor) thecontents of a poster in a foreign language embedded on the wall. How will you do it?You may read aloud the writing on the poster, so that the person below can hear it,letter by letter or word by word. The person standing below can then write it down inthe same sequence to have an exact transcript of the information contained in the poster. During the transmission of an image, the letters or words in the above analogyare the electrical signal containing information of the image --its colour and

brightness; the sound wave is the like the carrier wave, the person who shouts atelevision camera and so on.Television in a way emulates our sense of vision and extends it beyond itsnatural limits. But there are differences. While from the retina in our eye to our brainhundreds of thousands of electric circuits are used to convey simultaneously thecontent of a scene we see, in case of television only one such circuit is used to connectthe camera to the transmitter. This fundamental disparity is overcome in televisiontechnology by a process of image analysis and synthesis. The scene to be televised isfirst scanned and translated into an “electrical image” which is broken up into anorderly sequence of pulses that can be sent over a channel one after the another. Thissequential reproduction of visual images is feasible because of what is known as persistence of vision. Our brain retains the impression of illumination for about onetenth of a second after the source of light is removed. Therefore, if the process of image synthesis occurs within less than a second, the eye is unable to sense that the picture was assembled piecemeal. It appears as if the whole surface of the viewingscreen is continuously illuminated. Similarly, by recreating more than ten complete pictures per second it is possible to simulate the movement. Transmission of sounds ismuch simpler, essentially because a sound signal is inherently a linear array of information about the amplitude of vibration with respect to time.For transmission, a signal -- sound or light -- is first converted to an electricalsignal using a microphone or a video camera. These signals are then superimposed onto a carrier wave before being sent to the transmitter. Different channels of a radio or television use carrier waves of different frequencies. Radio/TV receivers are sodesigned that they can tune in to a particular frequency of electromagnetic waves at atime -- they ignore other signals. The images and sounds corresponding to one particular signal can then be selectively processed and reproduced by the receivers. Itis important to remember that radio waves are only part of a extensive spectrum of electromagnetic waves. This spectrum includes such familiar radiations as visible light;ultraviolet and infrared radiations, as well as X-rays and gamma rays. As you may beaware they all exhibit phenomenon of reflection, refraction, diffraction, interferenceand absorption. Since sound or the image signals both travel as an electromagneticwave, their velocity is the speed of light and they reach any destination on Earth almostinstantaneously.The process of mixing electrical signals from a microphone or a TV/videocamera with an electromagnetic carrier wave is known as modulation. At present twokinds of signal modulation are commonly used -- Amplitude Modulation (AM) and

Frequency Modulation(FM). In amplitude modulation the amplitude of the carrier electromagnetic wave at any instant of time is changed corresponding to the amplitudeof the signal electric current and in frequency modulation, the frequency of the carrier wave at a particular instant of time is changed according to the amplitude of the signalwave. Normally amplitude modulation is used for carrier frequencies corresponding tothe short, medium and long wavelength bands of radio frequencies. The televisionsignal is made up of two parts, both related to each other by the frequency of thecarrier signal. The image signal is amplitude modulated and occupies about threefourth of the total bandwidth (which is usually 6 megahertz) the audio component of the TV signal is frequency modulated and has a frequency in the range of the upper quarter of the band frequency range. Television and radio receivers are generallydesigned to process signals in a certain frequency range which are globally allotted for the respective signals. Normal radio receivers therefore cannot process sound signalsmeant for televisions. But such radio receivers can be designed. In fact in Lajpat Raimarket, New Delhi and some markets in Calcutta radio receivers are available whichcan receive and process TV audio signals.A Radio/TV transmitter performs essentially three functions: generation of thecarrier currents for the sound and/or light signals, modulation and amplification of theresulting signal (so that it has enough energy to dissipate over a large area). The carrier currents have frequencies accurate to roughly one part in 200,000. The signals are thensent to the transmission antenna, which in turn, sends the signal out into air aselectromagnetic waves. The receiver receives the electromagnetic waves through itsown antenna, demodulates the received signal (by mixing with an electromagneticwave corresponding to the carrier wave frequency generated within itself) and thenrecreates the original sounds and/or images.The broadcasting range of a transmitter depends both on its power (measuredin watts) as well as the frequency of the transmitted signals. For example, A typicalstrong AM radio station -- which broadcasts signals in the range of 1000 kilohertz ( inmedium wave band)-- has a power of 50,000 watts and its signals can be received far away. For example, programs broadcast on Delhi-B by a 50,000 watts transmitter in New Delhi can be heard at night as far as Calcutta (about 1500 km away). The least powerful AM stations operate at 250 watts and usually serve only neighboring areas.AIR Chandigarh programmes can be received in Delhi but not beyond. The power of FM stations which broadcast signals in the range of 100 megahertz, ranges from 100watts (which can broadcast up to 30 kilometers) to 100,000 watts, (which can broadcast up to about 100 kilometers). The dependence of the range of a radio signal