DRM - as Digital Radio Mondiale


Most of us when hearing DRM connect those 3 letters to Digital Rights Management. And there is no surprise - all medias are talking about.

But in this article I'll try to explain what is Digital Radio Mondiale. And DRM is the world's only, open standard digital radio system for short-wave, AM/medium-wave and long-wave.

We all remember the poor quality of those waves especially SW band. Now engineers made digital qulity available for those bands, but most important is that it is supported by ITU, IEC and ETSI.

This means that it is de facto world stanadatd. While DRM currently covers the broadcasting bands below 30 MHz, the DRM consortium voted in March 2005 to begin the process of extending the system to the broadcasting bands up to 120 MHz. The design, development and testing phases are expected to be completed by 2007-2009.

Unlike digital systems that require a new frequency allocation, DRM uses existing AM broadcast frequency bands. The DRM signal is designed to fit in with the existing AM broadcast band plan, based on signals of 9 kHz or10kHz bandwidth. It has modes requiring as little as 4.5kHz or 5kHz bandwidth, plus modes that can take advantage of wider bandwidths, such as 18 or 20kHz.

The quality of DRM audio is excellent, and the improvement upon analogue AM is immediately noticeable. DRM can be used for a range of audio content, including multi-lingual speech and music.

Many existing AM transmitters can be easily modified to carry DRM signals, but You will not be able to use your old receiver (unfortunatelly).

Why? Because DRM uses:

Products are allredy available on the market:

Consumer products:

Coding Technologies - USB receiver - € 171.55

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Fraunhofer IIS - Professional products

Sangean - Consumer Products

And many more

Or Software One

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Which needs:
For more information visit DRM Web site 1