Shortwave Radio

 


Shortwave, as the name suggests, is operated in short wavelengths, usually in the range of 3-30 MHZ. These are typically short-range operated by the mechanism of reflection and refraction. With the discovery of radio waves in the early 20th century, three major bands were defined: longwave, mediumwave, and short wave. The shortwaves have a wavelength lesser than 200 meters. Shortwave frequency gained such importance because long-distance communication with Longwave frequency could not be directly transmitted and needed vary large antennas, resulting in expensive receiver equipment and high cost. This also resulted in high maintenance costs for large wave radio frequency equipment.

The pioneers to work on mass scale on short wave applications are the Marconi assisted by Charles Franklin. In early 1920, they carried out large-scale transmission study cases to see the effectiveness of shortwaves in radio communication. They tested high-power transmission tests that involved a 97 meters distance communication over a 3MHz channel over a radio station in Poldhu and Marconi’s yatch, known as Elettra. With this successful experiment Marconi went into contract with British GPO and developed many commercial shortwave telegraphy circuits between British and other continents and countries like Australia, United Kingdom, Canada, and India. Shortwave communication became so popular that half of the longwave communications were taken over by shortwave communication within the next 5 years.

Shortwave is also used for international broadcasting by many governments. They mostly use it to convey information to overseas people due to its wide-ranging flexibility and ability to reach distant corners of the globe. It's often used to access places where radio isn't accessible, particularly by smaller groups, including alternative media.

Shortwave broadcasts can produce sounds effects as they have bursts of distortion sounding unclear at some aural frequencies, modifying natural sound harmonics due to echoes and phase distortion. A Russian physicist Leon Theremin, also a musician was the first person who used shortwave frequency in music equipment.


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