HD Radio or DRM – Which is best suited for India’s digital radio roadmap?

New Delhi: The open house discussion (OHD) organised by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Wednesday featured two key contenders in the race to shape India’s digital radio landscape.

The discussion revealed a divide between proponents of HD Radio, a U.S.-based patent of the In Band On Channel (IBOC) technology, and DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale), a system already in use by All India Radio in several parts of the country.

TRAI had earlier released a consultation paper on formulating a digital radio broadcast policy for private radio broadcasters, receiving 42 comments along with 13 counter-comments. 

A single winner?

Ramashish Ray, CEO of the Centre of Excellence under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), stated, “We have had the privilege of reaching out to both technologies, and we found that HD Radio technology was best suited for us.”

According to Ray, HD Radio’s chipsets are readily available, and the “coding was easy.” 

In his design lab, set up in collaboration with C-DAC and the Uttar Pradesh government, Ray has developed a range of Bluetooth speaker systems and a mobile phone supporting HD Radio technology. 

This mobile phone, Ray explained, was developed using a Qualcomm chip. 

Concluding his argument, Ray emphasised, “From a cost angle and a scalability angle, we believe that HD Radio would be the choice for us.”

Countering this, Col. (Retd) Dheeraj Chandola, Senior Consultant - Communications and IT at the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), presented a strong case for DRM technology.

Chandola said, “We look at broadcast media as a very important tool for disseminating alerts. Digital radio would also fall under the ambit of alerting the people. We already have in place a common alerting protocol platform, which is integrated with telecom service providers for disseminating alerts via SMS.”

He added, “As far as choosing between DRM and HD Radio is concerned, DRM has been very proactive in cooperating with us for trials. We have conducted trials across the country, and they have accompanied us to demonstrate their system, especially for disaster alerting. It is definitely endorsed by the NDMA.”

Uday Chawla, Secretary General of the Association of Radio Operators for India (AROI), offered a unique perspective, cautioning against deploying DRM along India’s borders. He expressed concerns about neighbouring countries like Pakistan developing large DRM infrastructures, which could pose potential security risks to India.

While proponents of a single technology highlighted the benefits of a cohesive broadcasting environment, advocates of multiple technologies warned of restricting the ecosystem by implementing a single technology nationwide.

DRM appears to align better with India’s cost-sensitive and diverse market, whereas HD Radio’s established ecosystem provides a more immediate solution.

What are HD Radio and DRM?

The In Band On Channel (IBOC) technology, patented as HD Radio, is designed to provide reception for vehicles, portable devices, mobile phones, and fixed receivers using terrestrial transmitters.

This technology embeds a digital signal on frequencies immediately above and below a standard analogue signal, transmitting audio and data through AM and FM radio stations. This setup allows listeners to access the same program in either HD (less noisy digital radio) or standard analogue radio broadcast (standard sound quality).

A notable feature of this technology is its ability to simulcast analogue and digital signals within the FM band, enabling existing FM broadcasters to transition gradually from analogue to digital broadcasting.

Functional in the U.S. since 2002, HD Radio technology has also been deployed in countries like Canada, the Philippines, and Mexico.

Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM), on the other hand, is designed for terrestrial broadcasting applications across all frequency bands allocated for analogue sound broadcasting worldwide.

The DRM standard facilitates the transition from analogue to digital radio broadcasting. It supports broadcasting on AM (SW and MW) and VHF (FM) bands, enabling single or small numbers of audio services to operate parallel to analogue transmissions.