IBOC Technology

The engineering world has been working on the development and evaluation of IBOC transmission for some time. The NRSC began evaluation proceedings of general DAB systems in 1995. After the proponents merged into one, Ibiquity was left in the running for potential adoption. In the fall of 2001,the NRSC issued a report on Ibiquity's FM IBOC. This comprehensive report runs 62 pages of engineering material plus 13 appendices. All of the system with its blend-to analog operation as signal levels changes. The application of the FM IBOC has been studied by the NRSC and appears to be understood and accepted by radio engineers.

AM IBOC has recently been studied by an NRSC working group as prelude to its adoption for general broadcast use .Its was presented during the NAB convention in April. The FM report covers eight areas of vital performance concerns to the broadcaster and listener alike .If all of these concerns can be met as successfully by AM IBOC, and the receiver manufactures rally to develop and produce the necessary receiving equipment. The evaluated FM concerns were audio quality, service area, acquisition performance, durability, auxiliary data capacity, and behavior as signal degrades, stereo separation and flexibility.

The FM report paid strong attention to the use of SCA services on FM IBOC. About half of all the operating FM stations employ one or more SCAs for reading for the blind or similar services. Before going to the description of FM IBOC system, it is important to discuss the basic principles of digital radio, and IBOC technology. In the foregoing sections we see the above-mentioned topics

2. BASIC PRINCIPLES OF DIGITAL RADIO

WHAT IS DIGITAL RADIO?

Digital radio is a new method of assembling, broadcasting and receiving communications services using the same digital technology now common in many products and services such as computers, compact discs (CDs) and telecommunications.
Digital radio can:
" Provide for better reception of radio services than current amplitude modulation (AM) and frequency modulation (FM) radio broadcasts;
" Deliver higher quality sound than current AM and FM radio broadcasts to fixed, portable and mobile receivers; and
" Carry ancillary services-in the form of audio, images, data and text-providing
" Program information associated with the station and its audio programs (such as station name, song title, artist's name and record label),
" Other information (e.g. Internet downloads, traffic information, news and weather), and
" Other services (e.g. paging and global satellite positioning).

A fundamental difference between analog and digital broadcasting is that digital technology involves the delivery of digital bit streams that can be used not only for sound broadcasting but all manner of multimedia services.