The WorldDMB Forum reports an update on the South African DAB+ trial, which will be conducted by the Southern African Digital Broadcasting Association in conjunction with the National Association of Broadcasters.
The trial will consist of two high power transmitter stations in Johannesburg and Pretoria.
After transmitter powers of 2 kW, 5 kW, and 10 kW have had their coverage verified, the trial will operate as a SFN in VHF Band III on Channel 13F on a frequency of 239.200 MHz.
According to the report, it is expected that between 18 and 20 public, commercial and community radio stations will participate, covering 21,185 square kilometers and approximately 21.5 percent of the country’s population.
This experiment will test DAB+’s end-to-end technical functionality, the extent of portable mobile coverage and signal permeability. It will also demonstrate digital radio services and value-added services as well as performance in the field using typical consumer equipment, and professional test and measurement equipment.
Additionally, they will look at vehicle penetration loss, building penetration loss and clutter’s affects on coverage. They will also test the various encoding methods (stereo, para stereo, mono) for different audio types and at different bit rates to get a good understanding of what bit rates/encoding to use for the different program types. Finally, they will investigate the delivery of PAD within these tests, and work to synchronize the audio and rate of change of the images.
