(Short-, Medium-, Long)wave Radio Meets Digital Stereo

cryptec writes "Today shortwave radio will have some new life pumped into it as the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle will be the first full time shortwave broadcaster of DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale). DRM is a full stereo fully digital broadcast system. The quality of the broadcasts are close to that of FM radio. For samples check out this link." Akai adds this link to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle with some more information, like the involvement of the BBC and Voice of America in this undertaking.

Comments

Nice!

[meringuoid]

Well, it sounds nice, over the web... Of course, that's before the /. effect strikes :-)

Digital radio over SW sounds interesting. I wonder if old Auntie's going to pick this one up? I gather BBC services got cut over North America recently in favour of web broadcasts... maybe digital technology will allow that to be reinstated in the future?

yet another avenue for Peer to Peer

[victorvodka]

Say what you want to about the utility of digital music over short-wave, I think it's a fascinating development. It's just another big application of Peer to Peer technology, one completely bypasses the internet. It's not just music that can be broadcasted this way - files can be sent and they could contain anything - newspapers, video, software, worms - and they could come from anyone with enough power to broadcast them. If the use of such technology becomes widespread enough - look for this becoming just another way to suck data into your computer, no matter how isolated you happen to be.

Isn't going to fly

[ferreth]

'Ya know, I used to think short wave radio was cool - until I discovered internet broadcast. Now I can listen to stations around the world, without buying any extra gear.

Maybe in the 3rd world, oh wait, the gear is going to be more expensive than SW radio - maybe not there either. Who is going to buy this to get the mass market price down? Not me.

Re:ham radio

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

At first glance it looks like the big win would be using the error correction protocols to get through noise and cope with hostile ionospheric conditions.

"The RF bandwidth can be chosen between 4.5,5, 9, 10, 18 and 20 kHz", according to an article at drm.org. Ham voice transmissions already fit inside 3KHz.

There's also a bucket of features which are great for broadcast, like redirect pointers to better frequencies, which are irrelevant bloat in the ham world.

Not so special

[poptones]

A receiver with a wideband IF output (ie just about any ham receiver), a PC, and a soundcard. That ain't so special; some of you need to free your minds, much less free your radios.

Software defined radio!

[tweakt]

This is a perfect application for Software-Defined Radio... see GNURadio.

It's already been used to decode HDTV signals.

Slashdot also covered this technology a couple years ago.

Citizen's bandits

[poptones]

Actually, it's never occurred to me until now that this same technique could (as another person here suggested) be applied to p2p communications. The FCC pretty much abandoned 11 metres long ago; there are several folks around here who still dabble in CB and not one of them is strictly "legal" - sliders, amplifiers, and even FM gear are all the norm on the band. It's awash in noise and crap but might actually be usable if some modern DSP methods were applied to communications. And, because it is (unofficially) unregulated, there is an opportunity for pretty much anyone with a CB and a PC with a soundcard to get involved.

In an area where 802. gear is pretty much useless because of line of sight issues, this might be just the ticket. There is more bandwidth in an HF carrier than in a phone line, and using low cost DSP tx/rx front ends it would even be possible to utilize two or three channels at once.

Hmmmm.... I think I need to go visit the neighbor.