CHAPTER 17

Radio Wave Propagation and the FCC Rules

This chapter discusses aspects of the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) rules that regulate broadcasting in the United States, and explains the propagation characteristics for the different broadcast frequency bands, which influence the rules for different types of stations.

FCC Rules

The FCC’s technical rules have the primary objective of ensuring that a broadcast station’s signal does not cause unacceptable amounts of interference to another broadcast station’s signal or to signals in other telecommunications services.

Another objective of the FCC rules is to ensure that the signals transmitted by the nation’s broadcasters are of good technical quality. These last objectives are met ...

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