- Parts (c) 2001-2003 Technische Universität Darmstadt, Institut für Fachbereich Übertragungstechnik
- Parts Copyright (c) 2003, 2004 Fraunhofer IIS, Erlangen, Germany
- Parts Copyright (c) 2004 - 2009 British Broadcasting Corporation
Originally written by Volker Fischer and Alexander Kurpiers
Additional contributions by Stephane Fillod, Andrea Russo, Julian Cable, Mark J Fine, David Flamand, Andrew Murphy, Oliver Haffenden, Tomi Manninen, Robert Kesterson
Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) is the digital radio standard for the long-, medium- and short-wave bands. The system is defined by ES 201 980 which is freely downloadable from the European Telecommunications Standards Insitute (ETSI). The system was designed by a consortium in co-operation with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It offers radio stations and new service providers access to the multimedia age with small bit rates for large target areas and long distances.
For more information, visit www.drm.org.
The bandwidth of a DRM bandpass signal is less than 20 kHz and the number of carriers used in the OFDM-modulation is relatively small (max. 460). These features motivate a real-time software implementation of a DRM-receiver on a conventional personal computer (PC) using the sound card as the input and output device. A long, medium and short wave front-end with an intermediate frequency (IF) between 5 kHz and 15 kHz is used to receive the DRM signal. Any commercial front-end with an IF of 455 kHz should be usable by adding a 455 kHz to 12 kHz adaptor (asumed the receiver bandwith is sufficient for a DRM signal). Documentation of receiver modifications for DRM reception can be found at www.drmrx.org.
With this software project we intend to implement a working software receiver with, at least, the basic features. Since this project is created at a university and the fundamental idea of such an institution is to teach and stimulate the creativity, this source-code is free under the GNU-General Public License (GPL). Dream is a development project which uses the open source model to improve DRM technology. The main aim of this project is to implement and test new research results on an existing system, whereby the synchronization and channel estimation is of special interest.
The programming-language is C++. Start of the project was June 2001. The software runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux and OSX
Although this software is distributed as free software under the terms of the GPL this does not mean that its use is free of rights of others. The use may infringe third party IP and thus may not be legal in some countries.
The intended audience of the Dream software are people who are interested in how to decode a DRM stream and want to learn from the algorithms used in this software and people who want to help us improving the performance of the receiver and the source code.