Re: Narrow Band Radio? Hobart Intermodal
Author: fkrock
Date: 12-16-2011 - 11:09
One thing to keep in mind is that the railroad industry is not a large enough customer to justify designing new radios. The land mobile communications industry supplies many more customers than railroads ever will. Therefore railroads will continue to get hand-me-down technology from land mobile. Land mobile eventually will go all digital in my opinion.
Although a spectrum analyzer may show wider frequency use than a narrow band analog signal, digital signal processing technology allows receiving the digital signal without problems from adjacent channels. Therefore digital signals make much more efficient use of spectrum space.
One rule for radios has always been listen before transmitting. So a crewman should not attempt to transmit until hearing the magic words "detector out."