A new system of sound broadcasting to mobile receivers

A number of European countries have shown increasing interest in the setting up of a digital sound broadcasting system designed particularly for mobile receivers. The system is intended for domestic hi-fi, portable receivers, and car radios. A system of this type would provide sound quality comparable to compact disk as well as integrating a large number of data broadcasting services. From the technical point of view, the problem is twofold: it requires the development of sophisticated source coding systems, and it requires the design of a channel modulation and coding system that can be used by mobile receivers up to 1 GHz. The general principles, system design, and receiver design are discussed. It is shown that the combination of OFDM (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing) techniques and concatenated codes provides an elegant solution to the problem of transmitting high rates (≈4.7 Mb/s) in a channel that is strongly affected by multipaths (delay spread up to 16 μs)