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FM broadcast transmitter of radio station KWNR, Las Vegas which transmits on 95.5 MHz with a power of 35 kW.
Radio

Radio is a way to send electromagnetic signals over a long distance, to deliver information from one place to another. A machine that sends radio signals is called a transmitter, while a machine that "picks up" the signals is called a receiver. A machine that does both jobs is a "transceiver". When radio signals are sent out to many receivers at the same time, it is called a broadcast.

Television also uses radio signals to send pictures and sound. Radio signals can start engines moving so that gates open on their own from a distance. (See: Radio control.). Radio signals can be used to lock and unlock the doors in a car from a distance.

Sound can be sent by radio, sometimes through Frequency Modulation (FM) or Amplitude Modulation (AM).

History of radio

Many people worked to make radio possible. After James Clerk Maxwell predicted them, Heinrich Rudolf Hertz in Germany first showed that radio waves exist. Guglielmo Marconi in Italy made radio into a practical tool of telegraphy, used mainly by ships at sea. He is sometimes said to have invented radio. Later inventors learned to transmit voices, which led to broadcasting of news, music and entertainment.
Uses of radio

Radio was first created as a way to send telegraph messages between two people without wires, but soon two-way radio brought voice communication, including walkie-talkies and eventually mobile phones.

Now an important use is to broadcast music, news and entertainers including "talk radio". Radio shows were used before there were TV programs. In the 1930s the US President started sending a message about the country every week to the American people. Companies that make and send radio programming are called radio stations. These are sometimes run by governments, and sometimes by private companies, who make money by sending advertisements. Other radio stations are supported by local communities. These are called community radio stations. In the early days manufacturing companies would pay to broadcast complete stories on the radio. These were often plays or dramas. Because companies who made soap often paid for them, these were called "soap operas".

Radio waves are still used to send messages between people. Talking to someone with a radio is different than "talk radio". Citizens band radio and amateur radio use specific radios to talk back and forth. Policemen, firemen and other people who help in emergency use a radio emergency communication system to communicate (talk to each other). It is like a mobile phone, (which also uses radio signals) but the distance they reach is shorter and both people must use the same kind of radio.

The word "radio" is sometimes used to mean only voiceband broadcasting. Most voiceband broadcasting uses lower frequency and longer wavelength than most television broadcasting.

Microwaves have even higher frequency; shorter wavelength. They also are used to transmit television and radio programs, and for other purposes. Communications satellites relay microwaves around the world.

A radio receiver does not need to be directly in view of the transmitter to receive programme signals. Low frequency radio waves can bend around hills by diffraction, although repeater stations are often used to improve the quality of the signals.

Shortwave radio frequencies are also reflected from an electrically charged layer of the upper atmosphere, called the Ionosphere. The waves can bounce between the ionosphere and the earth to reach receivers that are not in the line of sight because of the curvature of the Earth's surface. They can reach very far, sometimes around the world.

Radio telescopes receive radio waves from the sky to study astronomical objects.
Applications

Below are some of the most important uses of radio, organized by function.

Broadcasting

Broadcasting is the one-way transmission of information from a radio transmitter to receivers belonging to a public audience. Since the radio waves become weaker with distance, a broadcasting station can only be received within a limited distance of its transmitter. Systems which broadcast from satellites can generally be received over an entire country or continent. Older terrestrial radio and television paid for by commercial advertising or governments. In subscription systems like satellite television and satellite radio the customer pays a monthly fee. In these systems the radio signal is encrypted and can only be decrypted by the receiver, which is controlled by the company and can be deactivated if the customer doesn't pay his bill.

Audio

Analog audio is the earliest form of radio broadcast. AM broadcasting dates to the early 1900s. FM broadcasting was introduced in the late 1930s with improved fidelity.

Time and frequency

Governments operate long-range radio standard frequency and time signal services. These are implement by time stations which continuously broadcast extremely accurate time signals produced by atomic clocks, as a reference to synchronize other clocks. Examples are BPC, DCF77, JJY, MSF, RTZ, TDF, WWV, and YVTO. One use is in radio clocks and watches, which include an automated receiver which periodically (usually weekly) receives and decodes the time signal and resets the watch's internal quartz clock to the correct time, thus allowing a small watch or desk clock to have the same accuracy as an atomic clock. Government time stations are declining in number because GPS satellites and the Internet Network Time Protocol (NTP) provide equally accurate time standards.

Space communication

This is radio communication between a spacecraft and an Earth-based ground station, or another spacecraft. Communication with spacecraft involves the longest transmission distances of any radio links, up to billions of kilometers for interplanetary spacecraft. In order to receive the weak signals from distant spacecraft, satellite ground stations use large parabolic "dish" antennas up to 25 metres (82 ft) in diameter and extremely sensitive receivers. High frequencies in the microwave band are used, since microwaves pass through the ionosphere without refraction, and at microwave frequencies the high gain antennas needed to focus the radio energy into a narrow beam pointed at the receiver are small and take up a minimum of space in a satellite. Portions of the UHF, L, C, S, ku and ka band are allocated for space communication. A radio link which transmits data from the Earth's surface to a spacecraft is called an uplink, while a link which transmits data from the spacecraft to the ground is called a downlink.

Radar

Radar is a radiolocation method used to locate and track aircraft, spacecraft, missiles, ships, vehicles, and also to map weather patterns and terrain. A radar set consists of a transmitter and receiver. The transmitter emits a narrow beam of radio waves which is swept around the surrounding space. When the beam strikes a target object, radio waves are reflected back to the receiver. The direction of the beam reveals the object's location. Since radio waves travel at a constant speed close to the speed of light, by measuring the brief time delay between the outgoing pulse and the received "echo", the range to the target can be calculated. The targets are often displayed graphically on a map display called a radar screen. Doppler radar can measure a moving object's velocity, by measuring the change in frequency of the return radio waves due to the Doppler effect.
Remote control

Radio remote control is the use of electronic control signals sent by radio waves from a transmitter to control the actions of a device at a remote location. Remote control systems may also include telemetry channels in the other direction, used to transmit real-time information of the state of the device back to the control station. Unmanned spacecraft are an example of remote controlled machines, controlled by commands transmitted by satellite ground stations. Most handheld remote controls used to control consumer electronics products like televisions or DVD players actually operate by infrared light rather than radio waves, so are not examples of radio remote control. A security concern with remote control systems is spoofing, in which an unauthorized person transmits an imitation of the control signal to take control of the device.

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