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Fraunhofer – Taking Digital Radio to the Next Level

EARTO Innovation Awards 2017 – Impact Delivered Category

  Digital radio makes spherics and crackling interference in radio broadcast a thing of the past. New technologies from Fraunhofer make it possible for digital radio to replace analogue short and medium wave broadcasting around the world. Even local FM transmissions are being converted to digital, offering critically important advantages to radio listeners, manufacturers and broadcasters.   Innovation: EARTO Member Fraunhofer developed and helped standardize many important technologies contributing to the worldwide success of digital radio, from the latest audio coding used for the efficient transmission of audio content, to the data service Journaline, allowing on-demand access to thematically structured text content. Fraunhofer technologies also allow broadcasters to put digital radio programs on air easily, and manufacturers to cost-effectively develop radio devices.   Impact delivered: By supporting all the major open digital radio standards in parallel with a common set of technology offerings, manufacturers can easily develop unified solutions for the world markets. Listeners benefit from the improvements provided by digital radio including superior audio quality and increased program diversity. In the future, with the worldwide rollout of digital radio and the resulting increasing receiver sales, Fraunhofer expects a continuing increase in revenue thanks to property rights licencing.