The Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) broadcasting system has been designed by broadcasters, for broadcasters, with the active assistance and participation of both transmitter and receiver manufacturers and other interested parties (such as regulatory bodies).
DRM is an open standard, meaning that its system description is openly published allowing all manufacturers and interested parties to have free access to the complete technical specifications and can design and manufacture equipment on an equitable basis without any need to pay for a license to the DRM Consortium. This has proved to be an important mechanism for ensuring the timely introduction of new systems to the market and for accelerating the rate at which equipment prices reduce. This is a significant consideration for broadcasters investing in DRM infrastructure, manufacturers investing in receiver development and production, and even more for the listeners who will need to invest in the new DRM-capable receivers.
For the DRM technology there is no per-use fee, annual payments, or similar – neither for broadcasters/network operators, nor for broadcast or receiver equipment manufacturers. The DRM Consortium is not involved in managing or receiving any IPR royalty for DRM products. Rather, royalties need to be paid directly to the individual IPR holders, unless already taken care of by a product component supplier (e.g. for a DRM receiver module). For further information on IPR, please click here: ipr.drm.org.
DRM is the only global digital radio standard that embraces all the currently used radio frequency bands. It has been designed specifically as a high-quality digital replacement for former analogue radio broadcasting in the AM and FM/VHF bands; as such it can be operated with the same channelling and spectrum allocations as currently employed. An overview of the frequency-bands where DRM operates is shown in the Figure below:
For the physical transmission, the DRM standard describes several different operating modes (i.e. modulation parameter sets), which may be broadly split into two groups:
DRM has received the necessary recommendations from the ITU, hence providing the international regulatory support for transmissions to take place. The main DRM standard has been published by ETSI. In addition, ETSI publishes and is the repository of the entire range of current DRM technical standards.
The introduction of DRM services allows a broadcaster to provide listeners with significant improvements in service reliability, audio quality and, most importantly, usability. The standard provides many features and facilities that are impossible to replicate in analogue broadcasting. It is essential that prospective broadcasters understand the potential and flexibility of the system to allow them to optimise and configure their DRM networks in accordance with their own market conditions.
