MUMBAI: After a successful trial run held in India, Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) will conduct a full DRM+ trial in Trondheim, Norway during the months of May and June 2013. The trial will be held by a media company 21st Venture AS, which has also secured government funding for the project.
The trial will coincide with the Annual Conference of the Norwegian Local Radio Association being held from 24-26 May. Participants at the conference will receive information on the DRM standard and can experience the superior quality of DRM+.
Key members of the DRM Consortium from Fraunhofer IIS, Digidia, RFmondial and Nautel are stated to have offered their knowledge, expertise and support to the project. 21st Venture AS runs Radio Metro and several other local radio stations in Trondheim.
DRM Consortium chair Ruxandra Obreja said, “In Trondheim we hope to demonstrate that there is a cheap and effective solution for digitizing small radio stations (commercial and community) which can run on their own or compliment other standards.”
The project follows up on the recent successful trials in New Delhi, Edinburgh, Vatican City State and Brazil. This will be the first DRM+ trial involving a commercial radio network and testing out several receiver solutions. The DRM+ trial will broadcast 50W DRM+ on 94.0 MHz in Trondheim.
Radio Metro technical manager Eivind Engberg said, “One of the key benefits of DRM+ is that you are using existing infrastructure and thus get digital radio almost free of charge. DRM+ also uses so little capacity that you can feed the transmission site through ICE (Net1), 3G or ADSL.”