13 Jul DRM Presented at Radio Days Africa 2017

Representing the community station Wecodec in Johannesburg, Johannes von Weyssenhoff, DRM-Champion in the country, has presented the case of DRM to an international audience at the “Radio Days Africa”, an annual event taking place at the Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg. His presentation also included results and findings of WECODEC’s ongoing DRM+ trial, which is the first of its kind on the African continent.

The trial has already achieved some of its technical objectives: demonstrating there is no interference with analogue stations on either side of the digital signal in the crowded FM spectrum of Johannesburg. During the trial a 1/4 of DRM power is used when compared to FM, giving similar coverage at 4QAM. Fixed reception is performing better than FM. While exact ratios are still to be determined, generally it can be said that, so far, the findings and measurements confirm that less energy is needed for digital coverage than for analogue.

As it was explained during the presentation, along 3 audio services using the latest xHE-AAC audio codec various text and data were broadcast being successfully decoded by the receivers used.

The main focus of the presentation was on spectrum and energy efficiency as well as universal access to information for marginalised communities using tools like Journaline and this attracted the attention of some South African and African community radio stations.