(iTers News) – Rohde & Schwarz has expanded its family of highly efficient transmitters with the addition of the R&S THV9 high-power TV and DAB transmitter and the R&S TMV9 medium-power TV transmitter. The highlight of the company's introduction is the world's most efficient high-power FM transmitter: the R&S THR9, which offers the highest efficiency and smallest footprint in the industry. The R&S THR9 allows audio broadcast network operators to cut energy costs by as much as 50% as well as to reduce maintenance and rental costs over the lifecycle of the transmitter.
The world's most efficient high-power FM transmitter R&S THR9
The new liquid-cooled R&S THR9 high-power FM transmitter sets new industry performance benchmarks for energy efficiency and compactness. It provides output power ranging from 5 kW to 40 kW. The R&S THR9 is digital-ready, making it well-equipped to meet future demands because it supports both FM and digital standards in VHF band II such as HD Radio.
Network operators will benefit from the MultiTX concept, which Rohde & Schwarz successfully introduced with its new transmitter generation. MultiTX involves integrating multiple transmitters into a single rack. In combination with the liquid-cooling system, this helps reduce the amount of space required. The R&S THR9 concept makes it possible to accommodate as many as four 10 kW transmitters in a single rack. This compact design yields the highest power density available on the market and is ideal for transmitter sites requiring high output power in very tight spaces.
The FM transmitter owes its high efficiency to innovative amplifier design and an uncompromising approach to system design. For example, the two RF power components ‒ the power combiner and the RF rigid line ‒ have minimum attenuation. This allows the transmitter system to achieve efficiency values of up to 75% in analog FM mode.
The liquid cooling system reduces space requirements at transmitter sites by as much as 40% compared to conventional air cooling systems. Only cooling hoses have to be installed. MultiTX systems with liquid-cooling can achieve space savings of as much as 80%. The cooling system of the R&S THR9 has two pump modules in active standby and a heat exchanger equipped with two redundant fans. This design ensures high availability of the transmitter cooling system.
The redundancy concept of the R&S THR9 supports dual-drive configurations, N+1 configurations, or, a combination of the two. System configurations of up to 3+1 are possible in just one space-saving R&S THR9 rack.
The R&S THR9 operating concept is based on many years of user experience, which makes it exceptionally field-proven and optimized to meet the needs of FM network operators. The easy-to-access transmitter display unit has an ergonomic design. The transmitter has intuitive controls and provides quick access to components and parameters for various tasks – both on site and remotely. The transmitters can be integrated into a network management system for parameter and performance data monitoring and diagnostics.
The liquid-cooled R&S THV9 and the air-cooled R&S TMV9 support the DAB, DAB+, T-DMB and AT-DMB standards in the VHF frequency range. Both transmitters also support the DVB-T/H, DVB-T2, ISDB-T/TB and ATSC digital TV standards as well as analog TV standards to cover a wide spectrum of potential applications. The R&S THV9 delivers up to 30 kW of output power; the R&S TMV9 accommodates up to six transmitters per rack and can output up to 4.3 kW of power. Rohde & Schwarz uses a highly efficient amplifier technology that works on the Doherty principle to achieve energy efficiency of up to 46%. Network operators can reduce their energy costs for both of the transmitters by as much as 50%.
The new R&S THR9 and R&S THV9 high-power transmitter families as well as the R&S TMV9 medium-power transmitter family are now available from Rohde & Schwarz.