Emission Designators

Emission Designators

The U.S. Federal Communication Commission (FCC) requires that land mobile radio (LMR) license applications and the granted certificates include an Emission Designator for each channel. An emission designator is a seven-character code to represent the bandwidth, modulation, nature of signal, and type of information transmitted by a particular radio.

The defining rules are in 47CFR2.201 Emission, modulation, and transmission characteristics.

Bandwidth

The first four digits stand for occupied bandwidth, consisting of three numerals and one letter. The letter occupies the position of the decimal point and represents the magnitude unitof bandwidth. The first character can be neither zero, K, M, nor G; it must be a non-zero digit or H. The necessary bandwidths must be rounded to three significant digits.

The letters and their meanings are:

H Hz

K kHz

M MHz

G GHz

Examples of some common codes and the bandwidths they represent are:

400H 400 Hz 2K40 2.4 kHz 11K1 11.2 kHz 6M00 6 MHz

Modulation Type of the Main Carrier

N An unmodulated carrier

A AM (Amplitude Modulation), double-sideband, full carrier H AM, single sideband, full carrier R AM, single sideband, reduced or controlled carrier J AM, single sideband, suppressed carrier B AM, independent sidebands C AM, vestigial sideband (commonly analog TV) F Angle-modulated, straight FM G Angle-modulated, phase modulation (common; sounds like FM) D Carrier is amplitude and angle modulated, either simultaneously or in a pre-established sequence P Pulse, no modulation K Pulse, amplitude modulation (PAM, PSM) L Pulse, width modulation (PWM) M Pulse, phase or position modulation (PPM) Q Pulse, carrier also angle-modulated during pulse W Pulse, two or more modes used X All cases not covered above

Nature of the Modulating Signal

0 No modulating signal 1 Single channel; digital, on-off, or quantized; no modulation; excluding time-division multiplex 2 Single channel; digital, on-off, or quantized; with modulation; excluding time-division multiplex 3 Single channel; analog 7 Two or more channels; digital or quantized 8 Two or more channels; analog 9 Composite with one or more channels of digital or quantized; plus one or more channels of analog X All cases not covered above

Information type N No information transmitted A Aural telegraphy, for people (Morse code) B Telegraphy for machine copy (RTTY, fast Morse) C Analog facsimile D Data, telemetry, telecommand E Telephony, voice, sound broadcasting F Video, television W Combinations of the above X All cases not covered above

Common Examples

20K0F3E 20.0 KHz bandwidth; FM modulation; single channel analog; voice.

20K0F1E 20.0 KHz bandwidth; FM modulation; single channel digital; voice.

20K0F1D 20.0 KHz bandwidth; FM modulation; single channel digital; data.