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Principles of Radio Communications
Principles of Radio Communications
Cristian IFRIM
1. GENERAL CONCEPTS
1.1 INTRODUCTION
1.2 OVERVIEW
Radio spectrum belongs to the category of limited natural resources and that is the
main reason why it should be managed efficient and rationally in order to assure the
satisfaction of the public interest, the social one, the defense of the country.
Within the HF spectrum some certain frequency groups are allocated to some
specific radio services such as: aviation, navy, military, government, amateur (see Figure
4). The frequencies are given depending on the type of emission: emergency, radio, voice,
Morse code, facsimile or data. Those allocations are established by the national licenses.
FIG.4. HF RADIO SPECTRUM ALLOCATION
There are two main ways of propagation of the radio signals. Those are ground
waves and sky waves. Ground waves are transmitted alongside earth’s surface and sky
waves keep oscillating between sky and earth (see Figure 5).
Ground waves have three important components: surface waves, direct waves and
ground reflected waves.
Surface waves are emitted alongside earth’s surface reaching points over the
horizon. In the end, wave’s energy ends up being absorbed by the earth.
Direct waves are transmitted in straight line. Their energy becomes lower and
lower as the distance is increased. They can be bent or refracted by the atmosphere which
increases the distances they can reach over the horizon.
Ground reflected waves represent the way which the waves follow, they reflecting
on the earth’s surface between the transmitter and the receiver.
FIG.5. DIFFERENT PROPAGATION PATHS
4. IONOSPHERE
There are the so called sky waves which make possible the communication
beyond the horizon. Having some specific frequencies, radio waves are refracted or bent
coming back to earth thousands of kilometers away from the point when they were
transmitted. A signal can stand more than one consecutive reflections before reaching the
receiver but this depends on the frequency, moment of the day and of the atmospheric
conditions.
The area from the atmosphere called ionosphere and it consists of a huge number
of particles and gases electrically charged being placed from approximately 50 km to 600
km height. The ionization is determined by the radiation of the sun and it represents the
process during which the electrons leave the atoms, being created particles electrically
charged. The ionosphere is important for the use of HF waves because layer of gases it’s
like a natural satellite, making possible the majority of BLOS radio communications.
When the radio waves hit those ionized layers, depending on frequency, some of them are
being totally absorbed, some of them are reflected, coming back to earth and some of
them pass though the ionosphere, being lost in space. The absorption tends to be higher at
lower frequencies.
The ionosphere is made of four layers, each one of them having different effects
on the HF radio waves, depending on frequency.
The noise and the interferences come from external and as well from internal
sources. The level of internal noise is way higher than the one of the internal noise on a
significant proportion of the HF band. SNR is the rate that represents the quality of the
signal. It means signal to noise ratio and its measurements are made in dB. The lower
SNR is, the better the quality of the received signal will be.
The main natural source of noise is the lightening. The atmospheric noise is higher
during the summer, especially during the night. Another natural source of noise is the
cosmic noise, generated in space. This is uniformly distributed in space, within the HF
spectrum, but it doesn’t affect the performances lower than 20 MHz.
The artificial noise is the one produced by human. This kind of noise is generated
by human actions and it is called electromagnetic interference (EMI) and its highest
values are in the urban areas.
Unintentional interferences are caused because of the crowded radio spectrum,
causing interferences to each other, because of the huge number of people.
Intentional interferences or jamming come from the emission of operational
frequencies in order to interrupt communications. Jamming can be aimed on a single
channel or on a wide band. It can be continuous, using continuous emission, or the
radiation can take place only when the signal that have to be jammed exists.
CONCLUSIONS
Nowadays and in the future the HF radio fulfils two major duties. On the one hand
it represents the main way for the communications across huge distances to take place
when there is the need of a mobile system, to support emergencies or military operations.
On the other hand it is an alternative and a support for the other means of communication
such as telephone systems and satellites. In any of these situations the HF radio has to
provide a big diversity of traffic, including transmissions of voice, data and images. The
innovations to digital signal processing will lead to the perpetual improvement of HF
systems and equipments. The improvements of HF systems in technology based on
computer provides networks which reach the level of reliable communications because of
the automatic redirection of signals. Digital circuits will keep to replace the analogical
ones. The former ones are cheaper, more adaptable and more stable. Digital processing
circuits will be using higher and higher frequencies and analogical to digital convertors of
higher speed. The adaptation, which is possible because of the digital circuits, allows
radio modems to be reprogrammed in a short period of time for operations in a wide
band, the result being the occurrence of new levels of performance such as higher data
transfer rates and capabilities of improving the jump frequency.
REFERENCES
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocommunication_service
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_frequency
4. https://www.home-biology.com/electromagnetic-radiation/high-frequency-
electromagnetic-fields
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_spectrum
6. http://www.etsi.org/technologies-clusters/technologies/radio/radio-
spectrum
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_allocation
8. https://www.electronics-notes.com/articles/antennas-
propagation/ionospheric/ionosphere.php
9. https://www.electronics-notes.com/articles/antennas-
propagation/propagation-overview/basics.php
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionosphere
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_(radio)
12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_jamming
13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_jamming_and_deception