The University of Kaiserslautern and the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits in Erlangen, Germany, have developed a prototype portable DRM+ receiver from commercially available parts.
This project, commissioned by the State Media Authority of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany (LMK), demonstrated that software extensions to the Noxon DAB USB stick enable it to receive VHF FM radio and DRM+, as well as DAB+.
The lack of commercially available DRM+ receivers is one of the market barriers for introducing DRM+, although multistandard receivers for DAB+, FM and additional DRM+ are technically simple to manufacture.
To prove that a multistandard receiver for DRM+ can be implemented by inexpensive, commercially available components, LMK commissioned the project, in which students set up a functional stand-alone DRM+ receiver as prototype based on Terratec’s €25 Noxon DAB USB stick. The Fraunhofer IIS supported this project by enhancing its DRM+ decoder and adding DRM+ extensions to its Fraunhofer-Multimediaplayer.
“Lab measurements of this DRM+ prototype have clearly shown that a DRM+ receiver based on the Noxon DAB USB stick and an extended version of the receiver software can be manufactured by simple means,” said Ralph Urbanksy, chair of telecommunications engineering at the University of Kaiserslauter. “Thanks to the measurement equipment supported by the FH Kaiserslautern, we were able to demonstrate the provided functionality in all VHF bands.”
This prototype could also be easily modified to receive FM or other broadcasting services, said LMK.
The free report is available in German: “Entwicklung und Fertigung eines Multinorm-Empfängers zum Empfang von DRM im Mode E (DRM+) gemeinsam mit DAB+ und UKW-FM und von weiteren Hörfunksystemen“ covers technical details on the DRM+ receiver, as well as lab measurement results.
