Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) digital sound broadcasting in the AM bands

The paper describes the new world-wide broadcasting system Digital Radio Mondiale™ (DRM™) for the long, medium and short wave bands. It is originated by the goal of the consortium members to develop a flexible and efficient audio and data broadcasting standard. Better sound quality, more reliable reception in combination with additional service information make DRM a promising successor to analogue AM. Achieving good audio quality becomes a challenging task due to the limited bandwidth of 9 or 10 kHz, especially in often strongly impaired channels. Many other requirements, which were the basis for the system development, are illustrated. The article gives an overview of the system architecture, including the components for multiplexing, modulation, channel coding and source coding. Important receiver aspects, such as synchronization and channel estimation, are also described.