Geoff Mendenhall, far right, accepts congrats from Joe Snelson, VP/DOE of Meredith Broadcasting Group, chairman of the 2010 NAB Broadcast Engineering Conference Committee. ©NAB
A new award to be given at the NAB Show each year will honor the “best paper” in the Broadcast Engineering Conference.
The first recipient is Geoff Mendenhall, the vice president of transmission research and technology for Harris Broadcast Communications, who also is a past recipient of NAB’s Engineering Achievement Award.
Mendenhall, shown at far right, wrote about “Extending Your HD Radio Footprint.” The paper was among 50 or so at the NAB Broadcast Engineering Conference. To be considered for best paper, an author must submit an actual paper for inclusion in the proceedings; he or she can’t merely give a presentation.
According to a Harris summary, the paper was targeted to help radio engineers seeking ways to improve HD Radio signal coverage. “Geoff discussed recent changes to the FCC rules and regulations and also provided a specific blueprint that radio stations can follow to plan HD Radio coverage improvements. The paper was considered unique to other presentations at the show, focusing on elements that have not been widely covered in industry documents.”
He discussed pros and cons of space combining vs. common amplification; how to size a transmitter plant to accommodate elevated HD Radio sidebands; overcoming transmitter linearity challenges; how high-level combining of FM and digital transmitters can work with a filterplexer; using unequal HD Radio sidebands to prevent interference with adjacent channels; and opportunities to improve HD Radio coverage through the use of HD + FM gap fillers and translators
The paper is included in the proceedings of the NAB Broadcast Engineering Conference available from the NAB bookstore.
