When looking for a portable radio scanner, you will find many different options, including a digital radio scanner. Here are some basics to help you decide if one of this type is right for you.
A radio scanner, or police scanner, as it is often called, is a receiver that can be used to monitor VHF and UHF radio systems. With these scanners you can listen to any type of information transmitted by two-way radio. Most offer a feature that can be configured to ignore or accept transmissions from specific departments.
In the past, scanners could only monitor a few different channels. Depending on what you select, a mobile radio scanner is now capable of monitoring hundreds of channels between 30Mhz and 3Ghz. VHF to UHF is between 300Mhz and 3Ghz and is used by public service agencies with their two-way radios.
Very High Frequency (VHF), ranging from 30MHZ to 300MHZ, is used for FM radio broadcasts, television broadcasts, land mobile stations for emergency purposes, military, commercial, amateur radio, maritime communications, control communications of air traffic and air navigation. systems.
In addition to being used in law enforcement agencies, police scanners are also used for high-frequency communications in corporations and emergency services to keep your information private.
Due to the increase in the number of intrusions that occurred in their communication devices, corporations began to transmit digitally. This move opened the market for digital scanners, as the technology kept pace with advances made by corporations.
A digital radio scanner is the latest version of the popular scanners. They are designed to receive and process digitally encoded signals transmitted between various public two-way radio systems.
The reason these scanners are called “digital” is because they are designed to be compatible with radio signals transmitted in digital mode rather than conventional analog mode, although older analog signals and newer digital transmissions are used. Most digital scanners will continue to process analog signals as well.
Digital signals are less affected by interference and noise, and provide better usable information at the ends of their range when analog signals become unpredictable. Some digital devices also come equipped with the trunk tracking feature to make use of the trunk lines. Most police and fire departments use radio frequencies and channels that are connected through a trunk system.
When looking at a portable radio scanner, you will most likely come across the phrase APCO P-25. This is a set of standards for digital radio communications used by federal, state, and local public safety agencies in the US to communicate with each other. Unencrypted digital signals that comply with the APCO P-25 standard can be processed by digital radio scanners.