STEREO FM RADIO BROADCASTING BASIC INFORMATION AND TUTORIALS

An important advantage of FM over AM radio broadcasting is the availability of stereo sound. This requires the transmission and reception of the left and right audio signals, to produce a stereo image.

However, the introduction of stereo had to be achieved while still catering for large numbers of listeners who wanted to continue receiving in mono. The introduction of stereo FM radio had to go unnoticed by anyone using old mono radios. Without this condition, a simpler method could have been chosen.

The standard FM stereo system uses frequency division multiplexing (FDM) to combine the two signals of the left and right channels. The signals are filtered to limit the bandwidth to 15 kHz. The left (L) and right (R) signals are then added to produce a sum signal and subtracted one from the other to produce a difference signal.


The sum signal provides a monophonic signal, which provides a baseband signal for the frequency modulator. This was the technique used in mono FM and thus was the obvious choice for stereo FM, to allow backward compatibility.

An mono FM radio can receive this signal and recover the combined L and R channels, thereby satisfying the requirement for providing unchanged service to mono radios. The difference signal is used to amplitude modulate a 38 kHz sinewave. By utilizing a balanced mixer, double sideband suppressed carrier (DSBSC) is generated.

However, the modulation method must take into account the ease of demodulation. In particular, demodulating a DSBSC signal can be difficult. Both frequency and phase of the carrier are needed to perform faithful demodulation.


In the stereo system the DSBSC demodulation problem is dealt with by including a 19 kHz pilot tone in the broadcast. This tone is generated by a divide-by-two frequency converter circuit, which takes the 38 kHz carrier and produces the 19 kHz pilot tone.

The 19 kHz pilot tone falls midway in the spectral region between the mono sum signal (up to 15 kHz) and below the DSBSC difference signal information  The DSBSC signal extends from 23 kHz to 53 kHz, since the input modulating signals are band limited to 15 kHz. The DSBSC output is added to the baseband (L and R sum) signal and the 19 kHz pilot tone before being sent to the FM modulator.

A mono FM receiver ignores the stereo information by using a filter after its FM demodulator to block everything above 15 kHz. It passes the combined L and R channel signal, which is monophonic. A stereo receiver has an additional circuit after the FM demodulator to detect and demodulate the DSBSC signal. The stereo receiver detects a 19 kHz pilot tone and uses this to generate a 38 kHz signal.

This is then used to demodulate the DSBSC signal that carries the L and R channel difference information. The stereo receiver then has both the sum and difference signals, which is all that is needed to recreate the separate left and right signals.

Separation is achieved by adding and subtracting sum and difference signals. The noise power spectral density of a demodulated FM signal tends to increase with the square of the modulation frequency. This is why pre-emphasis is used to boost the high frequency baseband signals for maintaining the signal-to-noise ratio of the transmitted signal.

However, this means that there will be more noise in the 23 kHz to 53 kHz band used for the difference signal than for the 0–15 kHz band used for the sum signal. Consequently a significantly higher input signal level is required to receive a stereo transmission compared with a mono signal for the same output signal-to noise ratio.

Thus stereo reception requires far higher radio signal levels than for mono reception and is more susceptible to interference from other radio sources.