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- In radio and television broadcasting (as well as in amateur
- radio) the measure of signal transmission quality from the
- transmitter through the transmission line to the antenna is the
- ratio of the forward voltage (or current) to the reflected voltage
- (or current). This ratio is called SWR, or Standing Wave Ratio. It
- is a simple ratio and can be mathematically represented as:
-
- SWR = Reverse Voltage / Forward Voltage
-
- In commercial broadcasting VSWR or Voltage Standing Wave Ratio
- is the most commonly used parameter. It reflects the quality of
- the impedance match of the transmission line to the antenna system
- or the combination of transmitter, transmission line, and antenna
- system. It is the ratio of the square root of the Reflected Power
- to the square root of the Forward Power. This ratio is called
- GAMMA in several texts and can be mathematically represented as:
-
- GAMMA = sqrt( (Reflected Power / Forward Power) )
-
- Thus, to find the VSWR of an antenna system, one needs to know
- the forward and reflected powers (assuming matched impedances).
-
- VSWR = ( (1 + GAMMA) / (1 - GAMMA) )
-
- However, if the Forward Power and VSWR are known, the reflected
- power can be computed:
-
- Reflected Power = sqr( (VSWR - 1) / (VSWR + 1) ) * Forward Power
-
- Because many VSWR meters are accurrate to only two decimal
- places, there can be a large area of reflected power values given
- for a given VSWR. For example, assuming a forward visual power of
- 18.6 KW at 100% power and a VSWR of 1.06, a reflected power
- anywhere from 13.3 Watts to 18.4 Watts could be expected to be
- measured. Therefore, this program displays VSWR to the nearest
- hundredth and the reflected power to the nearest tenth of a watt.
-
- This program will compute the VSWR and/or Reflected Power of
- any television aural and visual transmitter. Under the current FCC
- ruling concerning measurement of aural power (73.1560c(2)), 100%
- is the maximum allowable aural power any TV station can radiate
- and represents 22% of the station's peak visual power. When
- calibrating the visual reflectometer (73.663b(1)(2)(3)), the peak
- video power of the transmitter should be measured with a wattmeter
- of known calibration, with carrier modulated with black picture at
- 75% set-up and 25% sync at 4.8 usec horizontal sync pulse duration
- into a dummy load of substantially zero reactance and resistance
- equal to the transmission line characteristic impedance, visual
- carrier only. The wattmeter reading then should be multiplied by
- the FCC correction factor of 1.68 to obtain the peak visual power
- of license.
-
- This program was written to satisfy a need to correlate remote
- monitor data against the calibrated local transmitter forward
- power and VSWR reflectometers.
-
-