GatesAir brings HD Radio Broadcasting to BD

GatesAir will turn on the first two HD Radio stations in South Asia in early 2016 for Betar, the national government broadcaster for Bangladesh. The HD Radio broadcasts, supported by two GatesAir Flexiva 10kW transmitters, will cover the capital city of Dhaka and surrounding regions.

Upon evaluating digital radio standards, Betar chose HD Radio for to its audio quality and Community Radiomultichannel opportunities.   For this application, signal coverage will be strengthened through a higher-than-usual FM tower for Betar (250 feet as opposed to 200) and a panel antenna—the first of its kind deployed in Bangladesh.

GatesAir worked closely with Betar across site planning and system design, including all transmission, antenna, monitoring and peripheral equipment. Along with the Flexiva transmitters, they also provided the Exgine4 HD Radio system, which includes a FlexStar HDI-200 Importer and HDE-200 Exporter at the studio. In this fashion, Betar can deliver program-associated data services (logos, station ID information, artist/song title details) over a single IP stream to the transmitter.

Betar representatives travelled to GatesAir’s Quincy, Illinois manufacturing center to receive training on the entire system, and GatesAir and local partner Resources-21 Limited will provide support to Betar engineers through the installation and commissioning process.


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