FM Radio is a technology that has reached
maturity and continues to serve a large role in our
society.[1] Within the FM broadcast standard lies
the ability to send digital information alongside the
audio signal. This information is known as the
Radio Data System (RDS) and contains
information such as the current song being played,
alternative frequencies, traffic, and weather. Newer
FM radio receivers often have the ability to decode
the RDS information sent for the single channel
they are currently tuned to. While useful to see the
RDS information from one station, it would be
highly advantageous to simultaneously see the
RDS information being broadcast from all nearby
stations. In order to do this we developed a digital
method that determines which stations are tunable
and then extracts the RDS information from each
in real time. The key components of our digital
method include antenna design and signal downconverting,
digitization, filtering, channel
identification, FM demodulation, and finally the
decoding of the RDS information itself. To
illustrate how our new digital method differs from
the traditional analog method of FM reception we
will briefly discuss the analog method before
outlining our new digital method.