ERLANGEN, Germany— Following a
successful General Assembly, the Digital Radio Mondiale Consortium and the
German DRM Platform held a European workshop, hosted by Fraunhofer IIS in Erlangen,
Germany, on April 6-7.
It was the first such event aimed at
offering solutions to all broadcasters, large or small. During their
presentations and discussions participants stressed that DRM is the ITU-endorsed
and internationally adopted standard for the distribution of programs
internationally, nationally and locally. DRM can also provide an economic and
complementary solution to exactly those coverage scenarios for which the
established DAB/DAB+ networks in Band-III were never designed.
Following their deliberations the
participants urged all stakeholders of Digital Radio
in Europe — including European organizations, regulators, broadcasters and the
receiver and automotive industry — to embrace publicly the duality and
complementarity of the open DRM and DAB standards as the complete Digital Radio solution for
Europe (and worldwide). This means a digital future for all broadcasters,
offering more program choices to listeners, extra multimedia services with text
and images, increased energy savings, and spectrum efficiency. The participants
ask ‘all European stakeholders to promote actively the manufacturing and
distribution of multi-standard Digital Radio receivers, comprising at least the
DRM and DAB standards.’
An early session, held in conjunction
with the open part of the DRM General Assembly, took a brief look at the status
of DRM adoption around the world, including the DRM roll-out in India. It’s the
largest digital radio market in the world, where over 600 million people are
being reached by DRM broadcasts.
On April 7, benefits and opportunities
of DRM were shown with practical applications. Ampegon (Matthias Stoll) showed
how easy and cost-effective the transition from analog AM to DRM can be. Marc
Holthof of the German Navy gave an example of how to use DRM over shortwave for
maritime broadcasting of information and entertainment to ship crews at sea.
Csaba Szombathy, Technical University of Budapest, demonstrated his original
monitoring program of DRM transmissions.
Regarding VHF applications of DRM:
RFmondial (Jens Schroeder), demonstrated how to provide DRM services in the
crowded FM band compatible with all the existing FM stations. Joachim Lehnert,
German DRM Platform Chairman, showed that DRM is a suitable system for
local/regional coverage in VHF Band III, fully compatible with DAB/DAB+ and
DVB-T networks. RFmondial (Detlef Pagel) also referred to the use of DRM in VHF
Band III and stressed that DRM+ is the most suitable digital system for the
local and regional single-station broadcasters, as a complement to multiplexes,
while sharing all the listener-related features with the DAB+ standard. Finally,
Manfred Kühn, Mobile Broadcast Consult, demonstrated the flexible transmission
of multiple DRM channels in a single DAB frequency block in VHF Band
III.
This session was followed by a status
report on the development of digital multi-standard radios, presented by Robert
Bosch Car Multimedia, NXP, Fraunhofer IIS, PnP Networks and Panasonic. All the
speakers finally emphasized the market and framework requirements for the
production of multi-standard radios for Europe.