DRM Front and Center at Russian Conference

Russian broadcasters took a deep dive into the realm of digital radio with a conference, “Digital Broadcasting Standard DRM: Results of the Experimental Zone and Development Prospects in the Russian Federation,” held in St. Petersburg on Nov. 18.

The conference highlighted the initial results of the DRM for FM trial in St. Petersburg and featured a number of speakers who provided insights into where digital radio stands in Russia.

According to reports, trial results thus far show that for “stable reception of a digital signal, significantly lower field strengths and signal-to-noise ratios are required, which allows achieving parity of service areas with FM broadcasting, ceteris paribus, an order of magnitude lower transmitter power.”

Victor Demyanovich Goreglyad is
deputy director general of RTRS.

Viktor Demyanovich Goreglyad, deputy director general of RTRS, gave a presentation about the prospects of Digital Radio Mondialein Russia, which he believes would work as the technology to switch the FM band to digital broadcasting. He specifically highlighted that using DRM will not created new digital channels while also allowing for the transmission of additional information.

RFmondial’s Albert Waal had two reports that he gave to the conference, the first focused on reviewing the DRM standard and the second talked about the experiences other countries had in implementing the standard, like India and China.

Other speakers at the conference included Sergey Sokolov of Digital Systems LLC talking about the plan for transmitting part of the DRM Simulcast complex; Sergey Myshyanov from St. Petersburg State University of Telecommunications shared the results from Russia’s experimental zone; Vasily Gerasimov of GPM Radio explained additional services are available with digital radio; and sound engineer Densi Davydov talked about the different approaches to multiband dynamic sound processing for analog and digital broadcasting.

In addition, Professor Alekseevich Kovalgin of SPbSUT shared info on sound data compression algorithms for digital broadcasting systems; Oleg Guminsky, a student at the school raised issue of market availability of DRM receivers; Igor Hvorvo, associate professor at ITMO University touched on regulatory support for digital broadcasting.

The conference also offered two demonstrations of digital radio broadcasting that compared the sound of FM and DRM formats.

The conference was organized by FSUE Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Network, Digital Systems LLC and St. Petersburg State University of Telecommunications.