There’s big news coming out of Indianapolis for the National Radio Systems Committee, the standards-setting group jointly sponsored by NAB and CEA.
Members adopted an updated Radio Data System guideline, adding new information on encoder security. NRSC-G300-B, RDS Usage Guideline was adopted by the Radio Broadcasting Data System Subcommittee, chaired by Dan Mansergh, director of engineering, KQED Public Radio, San Francisco. Approximately 70 pages in length, G300-B includes a new section, 4.6, providing information on establishing adequate RDS encoder security at broadcast facilities. The some 70-page document will be available on the new, more mobile-friendly NRSC website after a roughly two-week procedural review.
Members also elected two new subcommittee co-chairs. Glynn Walden, senior vice president, CBS Radio, and Jackson Wang, president and CEO, e-Radio Inc., are now the co-chairs of the Digital Radio Broadcast Subcommittee.
Walden, recipient of the 2004 NAB Engineering Achievement Award for radio, has been active in the DRB Subcommittee since its founding. In his previous capacity as vice president of Broadcast Engineering for iBiquity Digital Corp., he wrote the In-Band/On-Channel technical and regulatory specifications for what would eventually become the HD Radio digital radio system.
Wang is the founder of e-Radio, a smart grid communications company. He was an aerospace engineering officer in the Canadian military and a systems engineer with Litton Guidance and Control Systems on the U.S. Tomahawk Cruise Missile Program.
Walden and Wang succeed Andy Laird, former vice president and chief technical officer of Journal Broadcast Group, who chaired the DRB Subcommittee since 2007; Laird succeeded Milford Smith, vice president of radio engineering with Greater Media, who became, and remains, chair of the NRSC full committee.
During Laird’s tenure, a number of significant NRSC documents were developed including the latest revision of the NRSC digital radio standard, NRSC-5-C, which described significant new capabilities including operation with asymmetric digital sidebands for AM and FM, operation with increased FM digital carrier power and operation with reduced AM digital bandwidth.
