Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1530210
Winter 2025 – LOCAL695.COM 27 Wireless The other way is to use the spectrum more efficiently through new advances in RF technology. I was afforded the opportunity to sit down with Jason Waufle from Shure to discuss this new technology and hear where it will take us in the near future. Wireless Multichannel Audio Systems (WMAS) is a technology neutral approach to broadband digital transmission defined by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to employ new wideband modulation techniques to support the transmission of multiple audio links in one single wideband radio channel. In other words, it's the next evolution in wireless transmission that can allow higher channel counts in the same amount of spectrum than we can currently achieve using narrowband transmission. It is essentially, a multichannel carrier system using different codecs or algorithms to decode the individual channels. Even though this technique is new for wireless audio transmission, it is not a new idea. This wideband transmission scheme has been used for many years for Wi-Fi, cellular, and wireless comms in the 1.9 GHz DECT and 2.4 GHz bands. Before we get into WMAS digital systems, let's cover what a traditional narrowband digital microphone system entails because the technology behind WMAS is all based on digital transmission schemes. Digital wireless systems convert the analog audio to a digital signal that modulates a radio carrier in discrete steps (ones and zeros). Unlike companded analog radio signals, a digital signal reaches the receiver unaffected by the radio link. This allows digital wireless systems to operate with less noise, closer to the noise floor, and with few to no artifacts. WMAS takes advantage of all these benefits and expands it to a new regulatory framework. Narrowband transmission uses a single radio carrier per channel that is no more than 200KHz wide. WMAS would allow a wider carrier up to 6MHz wide in the TV bands in the United States, but requires that wider carriers transmit no less than three channels per 1MHz or eighteen channels per 6MHz. WMAS is not a technology, but a regulatory