Patent ID: 7877096

Claim:
A computerized method of improving the coverage of a target area by an existing radio transmitter, the method comprising: analyzing one or more potential alternative operational parameters of an existing radio transmitter that violate the operating parameters of an existing community of license granted by a regulatory body to the existing radio transmitter, wherein the potential alternative operational parameters are based on predictions of changes in the existing radio transmitter associated with the potential alternative operational parameters, and wherein the existing radio transmitter comprises at least one of the group consisting of: an AM radio transmitter, an FM radio transmitter and a television transmitter; predicting with one or more computer processors one or more field strength contours based on the potential alternative operational parameters; determining whether one or more of the field strength contours predicted based on the potential alternative operational parameters is less than a threshold; determining that a new community of license for the existing radio transmitter at the potential alternative parameters is needed when the field strength contour is less than the threshold; predicting based on the filed strength contour one or more communities that will be serviced when the existing radio transmitter transmits with one or more of the potential alternative operational parameters; determining with one or more computer processors, whether the communities are associated with existing community of licenses granted to other radio stations by the regulatory body; analyzing the existing community of licenses granted to the other radio stations to identify community of license candidates selected from the other radio stations that can accommodate the potential alternative operational parameters for the existing radio transmitter, wherein identifying the community of license candidates comprises: generating a list of communities within the field strength contour; determining a demographic of each community; determining a number of services licensed to each community; and ranking the communities based at least in part on the demographic and the number of services; ranking the community of license candidates based on licensed services and population characteristics; and displaying the ranking of the community of license candidates for the existing radio transmitter.