Imagine a radio station that could broadcast from 22,000 miles away and come through your car stereo in near CD-quality. It could also be commercial free. The technology that makes this possible is called satellite radio. It’s a subscription based service that offers a wide variety of music, talk shows and other programming.
Invented to overcome several limitations of AM and FM radio, satellite radio provides the freedom of unlimited travel with high-quality audio, exclusive content and no ads. It uses a network of satellites to broadcast programs that can be received by receivers in homes, cars and portable devices. The signal from the satellites is transmitted to terrestrial repeaters that help with local reception.
In the beginning, there were two satellite radio services: Sirius and XM. Despite their differences, both companies competed in the same market, which required a lot of work to get consumers to sign up for their services. To do this, they worked with automakers to place the radios in their vehicles and offered low-cost monthly subscription rates to offset the cost of the new equipment.
To increase the reliability of the system, Briskman devised a special circuit called a maximal-ratio combiner that takes in three independent signals from the satellites and terrestrial repeaters, then combines them together into a single output signal. He says this has helped the system avoid interruptions from highway overpasses and scintillating (very deep drops in signal strength caused by radio fading from trees).
The market for satellite radio continues to grow as it becomes more popular among people who value diverse content and uninterrupted listening during long distance trips. Its future outlook depends on a number of factors, including technological advances, the automotive industry’s growth, consumer demand for exclusive content and market expansion.
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