Our lesson on radio frequencies continues. We’ve looked at FM, AM, longwave, and shortwave. What else is there?
Well, there’s DAB, which stands for Digital Audio Broadcasting. It’s a standard used in Europe, Asia, and Australia that, in some countries like Norway, has replaced AM and FM altogether. On the radio spectrum, it gets 175.928 to 239.200 MHz, which puts it slightly above standard FM radio.
We will never see DAB radio in North America. We tried to implement it in the early 2000s, but there was little appetite for the kind of investment it required. Instead, we got HD-Radio, a digital signal which basically hitchhikes on what’s called the “sidebands” of standard AM and FM frequencies. It hasn’t really taken off, but chances are you have HD-Radio in your car.
One more radio story next time.
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