The HE-AAC v2 codec specified in DAB+ delivers exceptional audio quality at about one third of the sub-channel bitrate used in regular DAB broadcasts. More radio stations broadcasting on one multiplex leads to a greater station choice for consumers, while the more efficient use of the radio spectrum lowers the transmission costs for broadcasters.

Steve Evans, VP, Sales and Marketing, Frontier Silicon said: “Considering the efficient use of the available bandwidth in DAB+ broadcast, Fraunhofer’s decoder offers an amazing sound experience to the consumer. We expect our DAB+ radio modules to have particular appeal in key markets rolling out DAB+ services in the near future such as Australia and Switzerland.”

“We are pleased to see our audio decoder solution help speed the market introduction of DAB+ radios powered by Frontier Silicon chips. That way, both consumers and broadcasters will benefit from receivers available as soon as the first DAB+ station goes on-air,” said Harald Popp, head of the Multimedia Realtime Systems department of Fraunhofer IIS.

Fraunhofer offers complete DAB and DAB+ audio decoder implementations on many embedded platforms, including microprocessors or DSPs from ARM, MIPS, Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, Intel, AMD and IBM. Broadcasters can license Fraunhofer’s DAB+ encoder modules individually or as part of the professional DAB/DAB+/DRM broadcast server solutions.

The uniqueness of the Frontier Silicon DAB+ solution lies in its hardware-assisted DSP core architecture, which coupled with Fraunhofer’s efficient MPEG-4 HE-AAC v2 audio IP, enables complex broadcast streams to be decoded while keeping power consumption low. Venice 6 is the world’s first digital module capable of receiving Internet radio via Wi-Fi, DAB/DAB+, FM and music streamed from a network server.

Visit Fraunhofer IIS this week at NAB Show booth SL7424 in Las Vegas and Frontier Silicon at Hong Kong Show.

For more information, please visit:

http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/EN/bf/amm/products/dabplus