World’s first range of DAB+ radios by year-end

DAB technology company Frontier Silicon and Fraunhofer IIS have teamed up with tier one audio manufacturers to deliver the world’s first range of DAB+ radios.

Solutions incorporating Frontier Silicon’s multi-standard digital radio SoC Chorus 2 with Fraunhofer’s audio decoder IP are being designed into products from specialist brands including Bush, Grundig, Magicbox, Ministry of Sound, Pure, Revo, Tivoli and others, which will be available in shops by the end of this year.

Demonstrations of the solution can be seen at the IBC exhibition in Amsterdam (6-11 September) receiving a live DAB+ broadcast from Factum Electronics, but unlike previous engineering demonstrators, this will be the first time end-user DAB+ radios will be shown working.

Steve Evans, VP Sales and Marketing, Frontier Silicon said: “As DAB+ is being adopted by an increasing number of broadcasters worldwide, we are pleased to announce that our DAB+ solution is being integrated into a variety of audio products, including table top, clock radio, battery powered and WiFi enabled radios. While DAB+ is not required for established markets such as the UK and Denmark, this development will help to accelerate the global adoption of digital radio.”

Manufacturers designing DAB+ radios today are using a variety of solutions from Frontier Silicon including the Chorus 2 chip, Venice 6 multistandard (DAB+/DAB/FM/Wifi) module, and the Jupiter 6 productionompany, Frontier Silicon, and Fraunhofer IIS, worldwide experts in audio coding, have teamed up with tier one audio manufacturers to deliver the w-ready reference platform.

The uniqueness of the Frontier Silicon DAB+ solution lies in its 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.

DAB (based on MPEG 1 layer II) is achieving great success in the UK and Denmark, with over 5½ million units shipped to date and growing at a rate of 12% year on year in the UK alone. However, countries that have yet to roll out DAB are now looking to use DAB+ which utilizes the more efficient MPEG-4 HE AAC v2 codec, enabling a greater number of radio channels to be broadcast within a set radio spectrum.

Australia has officially committed to transmit DAB+ in 2009 and many other countries including Canada, Italy, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Malta, Israel, Hungary, Kuwait, Malaysia, and New Zealand are expected to follow suit soon*.

* Information provided by WorldDMB

Source: Media Network, Frontier Silicon via Mike Barraclough