HD Radio’s Emergency Alert Functionality to Be Showcased at NAB, Says Xperi

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will use next week’s NAB Show to demo HD Radio’s emergency alerting functionality for the agency’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS), emailed a representative for HD Radio parent Xperi. The demos will be at FEMA’s IPAWS booth in the Las Vegas Convention Center’s Central Hall, he said. Xperi also will demo HD Radio at its North Hall booth and will participate with NAB Pilot showcasing digital AM technology in the Future’s Park pavilion on the main show floor, he said. More than 320 HD Radio stations in 85 U.S. markets in January transmitted “emergency alert text notifications” to HD Radio receivers, said an Xperi white paper. HD Radio can enhance emergency alerting with many “advanced features and attributes,” including the ability to wake up receivers in sleep mode, “to provide greater resiliency, redundancy, and accessibility in the nation’s public alerting ecosystem,” it said.