A four-month trial to be conducted by the DRM Consortium and its partners will put the technical capability of the Digital Radio Mondiale DRM+ digital radio system in FM band II to the test. ‘After recent trials in Sri Lanka, Germany, Italy and Brazil, this will give us a chance to test the DRM standard in its DRM+ extension to an extent never done before in a complex and challenging environment,’ says DRM Chair, Ruxandra Obreja.

The transmission trial of this of will take place in the Edinburgh area of Scotland during February using an existing antenna that is shared with two FM services via a combiner. The services cover more than 500,000 people in urban, suburban and rural terrain and will allow the coverage of DRM+ in various transmission modes (lower capacity, higher ruggedness; higher capacity, lower ruggedness) in a range of environments to be measured. There will also be a comparison of the coverage of FM and DRM+ in terms of transmitter power. Other objectives include assessing the impact of DRM+ and FM transmissions on ech other.

Digital Radio Mondiale offers user-friendly, high-quality radio to be broadcast, and supports station names rather than frequencies, consistent digital audio, additional text and visualisation, an EPG, alternate-service signalling and automatic service following to DRM, DAB, FM and AM services.

More: www.drm.org