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igital radio, also called digital audio broadcasting (DAB), is transmission and reception of radio signals in the digital domain, as opposed to the traditional analogue transmission/reception by AM and FM systems. While digital television signals are now routinely received over cable and satellite systems, reception of digital radio broadcasts is still fairly uncommon. Digital radio is similar to hooking up the digital output from a CD player directly to a radio transmitter. At the other end is a digital-to-analogue converter (DAC), which converts the digital signal back into analogue mode so that it can be heard on the audio system as it was recorded. While this is not exactly what happens, the result is essentially the same. In practice, the CD player is hooked up to a control board, which, in turn, routes the signal as a part of the feed to the radio stations transmitter. The signal is either impressed onto a signal carrier and transmitted via uplink to a satellite (which, through a transponder onboard, retransELECTRONICS FOR YOU JUNE 2004
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usually interfere at a radio receiver that is within the reception range of both the stations. A small screen attached to the digital receivers displays text and pictures. Text, data and images can be diffused at the scale of a country or a region. The protocols used in the compression and broadcasting techniques are standardised, facilitating connection with existing networks such as the Internet. Multiplexing makes it pos- Visteon's MACH DSP combined with iBiquity sible to broadcast several radio technology brings HD Radio to reality programmes and data for a given area on one frequency, whatever be the (IBOC) that is compatible with the cursize of the area. So a vehicle driver can rent analogue radio formats. The IBOC syslisten to his favourite radio programme tem will be compatible with existing tunwithout having to change the frequency ers as it utilises the existing AM and FM and experiencing distortion. bands by attaching a digital side-band signal to the standard analogue signal. So if a station is currently located at 99.9 on Eureka 147: the digital radio the FM band, it will remain at 99.9 FM system in use whether in analogue or IBOC digital radio. For digital compression, the IBOC uses The Eureka 147 digital radio system is a perceptual audio coder (PAC) developed currently being used around the world. by Lucent Technology. This system broadcasts at much higher However, utilising the existing AM and frequencies than standard radio transmisand FM bands has disadvantages as well: sions over the 88-108MHz FM band and Due to the bandwidth limitations, digital 0.525-1.705MHz AM band. The actual freAM broadcasts will have FM-quality quencies used for digital radio depend on sound, while digital FM broadcasts will the availability for that particular country. have near-CD-quality sound. Also, AM and For example, the UK utilises Band III (rangFM frequencies are not suitable for sateling from 174 to 240 MHz), while Canada lite transmission if extraterrestrial transuses part of the L-Band (1452-1492 MHz mission is desired in the future. of 300-1500 MHz). In comparison, satellite television utilises 4-20GHz frequencies. The Eureka system broadcasts IBOC technologies from multiple stations and services over a single USADR and iBiquity Digital frequency in something called a multiplex. The bandwidth within the multiplex is alThe IBOC technology allows digital audio lotted to stations as needed. For instance, broadcasting without the need for new a high-quality stereo station is given more spectrum allocations for the digital signal. bandwidth than a news or talk radio staIt provides for enhanced sound fidelity, tion which may be broadcast in mono. improved reception and new wireless data Stereo programming is typically broadcast services. This enhancement to AM and at 192 kilobits. Same as in the case of FM will offer tremendous growth opporMP3, digital compression is used to combine many services onto one signal for Benefits of Digital Audio broadcast over a single frequency. Broadcasting With a bandwidth of 192 kbits for ste1. High-quality digital audio reo broadcast, the sound quality of digital 2. Rugged, reliable delivery to fixed, porradio, which utilises Musicam digital comtable and mobile receivers for interferpression, is quite good but not CD-quality. ence-free reception
3. Efficient use of the limited radio frequency spectrum available 4. Easy-to-use receivers 5. Flexibility and choice of programmes for listeners 6. Added-value system features such as RDS and multimedia
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yet to convert and digital broadcasts from stations that have converted. The existing analogue radios will continue to receive the analogue portion of the broadcast. Specific features of IBOC improve the existing analogue reception during the hybrid mode.
Benefits to broadcasters
Although each station will require a new digital broadcast exciter, some stations could be upgraded to the IBOC technology without replacing or with minimal modification of the existing transmitters. Depending on the existing infrastructure of the station, the broadcaster will need to spend between $30,000 and $200,000 to upgrade the station to digital. The broadcasters will be able to preserve the existing listener base of stations and retain all brand equity associated with their dial positions, typically developed at great expense over long periods of time.
tunities for broadcasters, manufacturers, retailers and automotive manufacturers. USA Digital Radio (USADR) is engaged in the design of AM and FM IBOC DAB systems. The FM hybrid mode developed by it allows the station to simultaneously broadcast the same programming in analogue and digital. Although the level of the digital signal in the hybrid mode must be limited to accommodate the analogue broadcast, the hybrid system still has an edge over the existing analogue service due to its enhanced audio fidelity, improved signal robustness and expanded auxiliary services. The USADR AM IBOC DAB system basically comprises the codec, forward errorcorrection (FEC) coding and interleaving section, modem and blender. The codec encodes and decodes the audio signal. FEC coding and interleaving provide robustness through redundancy and diversity. The modem modulates and demodulates the signal. Blending provides a smooth transition from the digital to analogue signal. iBiquity Digital Corp. has developed a fully digital IBOC system that permits a smooth evolution from the current analogue FM. The system delivers digital audio and data services to mobile, portable and fixed receivers from terrestrial transmitters in the existing VHF radio band. The broadcasters may continue to transmit analogue FM simultaneously with the new, higher-quality and more robust digital signals. This approach allows broadcasters to shift from analogue to digital radio while maintaining their current frequency allocations. iBiquity Digitals IBOC technology will allow radios to be backward- and forwardcompatible, so they can receive traditional analogue broadcasts from stations that are
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ence to the host analogue station and stations on adjacent channels. The system employs multiple digital signalling techniques, such as redundant sidebands, blend, first adjacent cancellation and code and power combining. To compress the audio data and increase transmission without losing sound quality, it uses the PAC audio-compression technology. An integral part of iBiquity Digitals AM and FM digital broadcast technology, the PAC audio-compression technology utilises advanced signal processing and psycho-acoustic modelling to interpret human hearing and eliminate redundancies and irrelevancies in the audio signal. iBiquity Digital has designed the PAC technology for Internet broadcasting as well. Companies will use the PAC technology to encode and decode music, talk and information programming that will be delivered over the Internet. iBiquity Digitals PAC technology will also be used in satellite digital radio. Audio quality at a given compression rate is a crucial factor for satellite digital radio. With PAC technology, a high audio quality can be obtained at various bitrates.
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Because adjacent channel interference occurs on over half of all radio stations, the IBOC technology employs redundant information placed in the upper and lower sidebands to ensure that the system performs in all radio environments. It further combats interference through first adjacent canceller (FAC) technology. FAC cancels the effects of a strong analogue adjacent channel station that can easily wipe out a digital sideband. This patent-pending technology greatly increases the chances of a sideband survival and, when combined with redundant sideband implementation, provides robust digital reception under all interference conditions. The IBOC technology overcomes multipath and noise through the use of systems, drive this trade-off. Short interleavers lead to rapid tuning, but result in higher rates of audio dropouts. Long interleavers provide more robust performance, but result in longer tuning times. The IBOC technology meets both the objectives by incorporating a long interleaver to ensure the required signal robustness while achieving instant tuning by using the available analogue signal and seamlessly blending to digital after the digital signal is acquired. At the edge of a stations coverage area, blending to analogue prevents abrupt digital dropouts (the dreaded digital cliff effect) by using the host analogue audio as a backup channel. The quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulation technique ensures robust performance while providing sufficient throughput for virtual CD-quality digital audio. It permits the use of advanced FEC coding techniques that exploit knowledge of the non-uniform interference environment. QPSK is also simpler and more robust than higher-order forms of modulation, especially in a multipath environment. Since QPSK has a bandwidth efficiency of two bits per second per hertz, it supports an information bitrate that is sufficient for transmission of virtual CD-quality audio in the bandwidth available. Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) allows frequency-division multiplexing of many QPSK-modulated sub-carriers in an orthogonal fashion such that each sub-carrier does not interfere with its adjacent sub-carriers. This offers a high level of robustness in a multipath channel. When combined with FEC coding and interleaving, the digital signals robustness is enhanced further. The OFDM structure supports FEC coding techniques that maximise performance in the non-uniform interference environment. The most important coded bits can modulate OFDM carriers that are located in the most protected regions of the channel.
proprietary coding and power combining techniques. It uses proprietary error-correction techniques that apply complementary coding to the upper and lower sidebands. The use of these complementary codes allows for a more powerful errorcorrection algorithm by code-combining the sidebands, ensuring near dropout-free digital reception. The sidebands are also power-combined in the receiver to deliver an additional power gain. Station acquisition or tuning time is a critical system requirement. Listeners are accustomed to tuning in a station without the delays associated with digital acquisition. In digital transmission systems, signal robustness is traded off versus tuning time. Interleavers, which are portions of control code integral to all digital audio broadcast
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Source coding
CD digital audio has a data rate of 1.4112 Mbps (44,100 16-bit samples per second, for left and right channels). The FM channel bandwidth does not have the capacity to support a sufficiently high data rate to provide uncompressed CD-quality audio. Therefore an audio codec (coder-decoder) compression technique must be employed. The audio codec is a source-encoding device that removes redundant information
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wide range of applications from Internet audio to multichannel surround sound. sulting bitstream is packaged into a modem frame and QPSK- and OFDM-modulated to produce the DAB base-band signal. The base-band signal is up-converted and amplified before being power combined with the analogue signal.
Service flexibility
Typically, the IBOC DAB system provides two types of auxiliary services: ancillary services and opportunistic data. Ancillary services. Data can be transmitted at up to 120 kbps by reducing the audio quality and FEC parity accordingly. The audio rate could vary over time, based on the programming or the desired audio quality. For example, speech may be encoded at a lower rate than music; news and talk formats require less throughput that could be dedicated to data. If data throughput is not required, the extra capacity could be allocated to FEC parity to increase the robustness of the digital audio. Opportunistic data. Up to 32 kbps can be intermittently multiplexed with the audio on a priority basis or when spare bandwidth is available, as determined by an entropy analysis from the audio encoder. For example, the opportunistic data rate might be increased during a less complex passage of music or during a news report following a musical programme. Programme-associated data, which is used to display audio and station information on the receiver, takes a small fraction of the capacity since it does not need to be transmitted in real time.
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cations. ADR is broadcast via Astra series satellites such as Astra 1A and Astra 1B, covering most parts of Europe. It cannot be received in car and by portable receivers. Radio data system. The radio data system (RDS) is an add-on to the FM radio. It has simplified operation and improved reception quality, but the disturbances due to multipath propagation in in-car FM reception are still present. DAB offers all the functions of RDS but in a better and more extended form. The transmission rate of RDS is very low at 730 bits/second. Digital television. The digital video broadcasting (DVB) system was developed mainly for use in television, although it can also transmit audio and data. There are a variety of standards for satellite, cable and terrestrial broadcasting. Terrestrial DVB, like DAB, uses the OFDM system at a bandwidth of 8 MHz. Its mobile reception is possible at the cost of reception quality or service area. Digital AMDRM. This system transmits below the 30MHz shortwave band (AM). It uses the COFDM transmission technique, which means that the digital signal is shared across a large number of closely spaced carriers that are contained However, the transition to digital radio will not be subject to the paralysis that has characterised the transition to digital TV. Fraught with delay and a lukewarm response from the public unwilling to buy costly new sets, digital TV has faced an uphill battle. Where consumers are currently asked to pay thousands of dollars for digital television receivers, radio equipment capable of receiving digital IBOC transmissions will cost about $100 more than the equivalent analogue equipment now on the market. But even though broadcasts on the Eureka system are available in many parts of the world, penetration of digital radio tuners into homes has been minimal. It remains to be seen how the IBOC system fares in the US or whether the two digital radio formats will continue to coexist. Either way, even if digital radio becomes a success, it will probably take five to ten yearspossibly even longerbefore conventional analogue radio broadcasts are suspended, if ever! The author is a lecturer at N.L. Polytechnic College, Mettupalayam, Tamil Nadu
within the allotted transmission channel. The DRM system works well over long paths as long as the signal-to-noise ratio is high enough.
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