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Radio combines DAB/DAB+ and internet streaming

A Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS product story

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Apr 18, 2008

The HE-AAC v2 codec specified in DAB+ delivers exceptional audio quality at about one third of the sub-channel bitrate used in regular DAB broadcasts.

Frontier Silicon has partnered with Revo to deliver the world's first radio that combines DAB/DAB+ and internet streaming.

Revo's Blik Radiostation, containing Frontier Silicon's Venice 6 multistandard module, is the first digital radio on the market using Fraunhofer's DAB+ audio decoder and framework.

The Blik offers native DAB+ support without the need for further upgrades.

The HE-AAC v2 codec specified in DAB+ delivers exceptional audio quality at about one third of the sub-channel bitrate used in regular DAB broadcasts.

More radio stations broadcasting on one multiplex leads to a greater station choice for consumers, while the more efficient use of the radio spectrum lowers the transmission costs for broadcasters.

Steve Evans, VP, Sales and Marketing, Frontier Silicon said: "Considering the efficient use of the available bandwidth in DAB+ broadcast, Fraunhofer's decoder offers an amazing sound experience to the consumer".

"We expect our DAB+ radio modules to have particular appeal in key markets rolling out DAB+ services in the near future such as Australia and Switzerland".

"We are pleased to see our audio decoder solution help speed the market introduction of DAB+ radios powered by Frontier Silicon chips".

"That way, both consumers and broadcasters will benefit from receivers available as soon as the first DAB+ station goes on-air", said Harald Popp, head of the Multimedia Realtime Systems department of Fraunhofer IIS.

Fraunhofer offers complete DAB and DAB+ audio decoder implementations on many embedded platforms, including microprocessors or DSPs from ARM, MIPS, Texas Instruments, analogue Devices, Intel, AMD and IBM.

Broadcasters can license Fraunhofer's DAB+ encoder modules individually or as part of the professional DAB/DAB+/DRM broadcast server solutions.

The Frontier Silicon DAB+ solution has a hardware-assisted DSP core architecture which, coupled with Fraunhofer's efficient MPEG-4 HE-AAC V2 audio IP, enables complex broadcast streams to be decoded while keeping power consumption low.

Venice 6 is the world's first digital module capable of receiving internet radio via Wi-Fi, DAB/DAB+, FM and music streamed from a network server.