Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!tgr!d3unix!jhs@Mitre-Bedford
From: jhs%Mitre-Bedford@d3unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.ham-radio
Subject: Re: ACSB Transmissions
Message-ID: <8406@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 21-Feb-85 12:24:31 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.8406
Posted: Thu Feb 21 12:24:31 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 26-Feb-85 20:07:47 EST
Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA
Lines: 21

ACSB is Amplitude Companded Single sideBand or something like that.
As near as I can tell, it is very much like the SSB widely used on the ham
bands these days by speech processor afficionadi, except that the receiver
has a provision for expanding the dynamic range again, so it shouldn't sound
quite so awful on receivers so equipped.  If you listen with your Kenwood,
it should be perfectly intelligible, but probably would sound like someone
running a lot of compression (which they are).

According to some of my old cohorts at Motorola, ACSB is nice in theory, but
loses out to FM (which they conveniently happen to be able to supply from
their standard product line) in urban environments where the real limiting
factors are adjacent-channel interference, intermod, multipath, and all those
things that don't show up in the academic investigations of SNR in FM versus
ACSB systems.  Clearly, Motorola has an axe to grind, but they also have a
whole lot of RF systems expertise and actual experience with urban
environments, so their opinion should be considered very seriously before
everybody converts madly to ACSB!

						73,
						John Sangster, W3IKG
						jhs at mitre-bedford