If you’re like most people, you spend a lot of time listening to the radio in your car. Whether you’re cruising a boulevard with the top down or just on your way to work, there’s nothing quite like it. But there are some things about terrestrial broadcast radio that can be annoying. Enter satellite radio, a subscription-based service that offers scores of channels with music, news, talk, sports and more. It’s available anywhere you can get a line of sight to the satellites, and it doesn’t interrupt your favorite commercials.
The first satellite radio stations started broadcasting in 1999. Broadcasts are encrypted and delivered via a signal beam from three satellites in geostationary orbit. Each satellite transmits three different signal beams, each covering 5.4 million square miles (14 million square kilometers). Each car has its own receiver that picks up the signals and decodes them. A maximum-ratio combiner ensures that if you lose a signal from one of the three satellites, you will still get a strong one from another, and so on.
There have been three major satellite radio companies (not counting MobaHo! of Japan): WorldSpace, Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio. WorldSpace was founded in the 1990s and operated in Africa and Asia, while Sirius and XM competed for the North American market. WorldSpace went bankrupt in 2009, and Sirius and XM merged to avoid bankruptcy. The combined company, now called Sirius XM Satellite Radio, continues to operate today.
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