Vaughan Taylor, Taylor Engineering and Consulting Services, shares his views on the growing use of digital FM exciter technologies for community radio. Several transmitter manufacturers have considered the use of digital signal processing (DSP) and direct digital synthesis (DDS) techniques to achieve direct-to-FM carrier modulation without facing the problems of doing this via analogue exciters.
... [Show full abstract] The core of a DDS exciter is a numerically controlled oscillator (NCO) which produces a discrete, time-quantized version of the output waveform. The NCO is under control of the frequency control register, which determines the period of the output waveform produced by it. Nautel is one of the companies, which has released the VS series FM transmitters ranging from 300 W to 2,5 kW. The VS series is a completely integrated digital exciter/transmitter and offers several features and benefits that are unique, enabling existing community radio stations to compete in the world of Internet protocol (IP) broadcasting.