Digital radio technology uses USB data stream for services - Brief Article

Electronics Times, Sept 18, 2000

Psion previewed its Wavefinder digital radio technology at IBC. Digital radio offers users the possibility of displaying text information on what is currently playing, what is the forthcoming playlist and of recording to MP2 and MP3 without an Internet connection.

Digital radio was developed by the international Eureka 147 consortium. It compresses source material into computer code. Services are grouped together into multiplexes and transmitted as a block signal.

About 70% of the UK is currently covered by digital radio broadcasts. Most of western Europe is now covered, and services are likely to be rolled out in Australia, South Africa, China and India soon. Eureka 147 is an accepted European standard.

The Wavefinder aerial tunes to band III at 174 to 240MHz and the L band at 1452MHz to 1492MHz. The digital receiver decodes data services at 256Kbit/s each, and uses coded orthogonal frequency division multiplex modulation.

The receiver delivers the selected data services from a DAB multiplex to the PC via USB in the form of a data stream. Software then provides error correction and MPEG audio decoding.

Copyright: United Business Media Ltd.