India Leads The Way With DRM

The transition from legacy analog broadcasts to digital radio for the nationwide radio network in the former AM bands is seamless, as AIR is updating the existing transmitter infrastructure while offering analog-digital simulcast services at the same time. By now, the most recent addition to the AAC codec family is on the air in India: already, the first five major transmitter locations in India, two at Delhi, and one each at Bangalore, Pune, and Chennai have been upgraded with xHE-AAC-enabled DRM equipment by RFmondial with Fraunhofer technology components inside. In total, there are 39 transmitter locations (including 35 transmitters that form the domestic medium-wave network), which all are expected to receive this latest upgrade moving forward.

XHE-AAC (Extended HE-AAC), primarily developed by Fraunhofer IIS and the latest addition to the MPEG AAC codec family, bridges the gap between speech and audio coding. It provides consistently high-quality audio for all signal types, such as speech, music or mixed content, at all bit rates – starting as low as 6 kbit/s for mono and 12 kbit/s for stereo services, up to 500 kbit/s and above. This makes xHE-AAC the audio codec of choice for digital radio and adaptive streaming applications. It is a mandatory audio codec in Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM)

Besides enabling more and higher-quality audio services per DRM transmission, the new xHE-AAC codec also allows broadcasters to benefit from a simplified broadcast head-end configuration, as all audio parameters are automatically streamlined internally by the xHE-AAC encoder. And the encoder is equally optimized for speech and music content, which eliminates the need to change configuration settings depending on the current type of audio content being broadcast. xHE-AAC makes it possible to provide much better, FM-like audio quality, as well as more programs in a single DRM transmission, up to three instead of one. The upgraded DRM encoder equipment also supports the provision of detailed textual information like current news, information, program schedules, traffic updates, and contact information via DRM’s Journaline advanced text service. Eventually, based on DRM’s emergency warning functionality (EWF)

xHE-AAC will align digital radio with the world of modern consumer devices and support for xHE-AAC audio decoding will be a default feature of the Android platform from version 9 (Pie) onwards. The use of xHE-AAC in DRM and the codec’s suitability for adaptive web streaming to mobile phones enable Indian broadcasters to bring the two worlds of radio and streaming together. The integrated broadcast solution offers a seamless user experience and reaches listeners on all classes of devices, from standalone radios to cars and mobile phones. In addition, more and more receiver models will combine the two distribution paths on a single device, no matter if it is a mobile phone with built-in digital radio reception, a car with a multi-mode receiver solution or a standalone desktop radio with built-in Wi-Fi streaming.

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