Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB)

Abstract

Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) is a suite of standards that has been mainly created for the broadcasting of digital radio. DAB was essentially developed within the European research project EUREKA 147 since 1987. The official standard specifying DAB was published in 1995, and commercial broadcasts started in 1997. At the time of its development, DAB has been very pioneering. It introduced new technologies such as highly efficient audio compression. The origins of MP3 audio encoding – which led to disruptive changes in the music industry – were part of the DAB development. In addition, the introduction of the OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex) modulation – used in practically all state‐of‐the‐art terrestrial communications standards – was part of DAB. This article gives an overview of the complete DAB ecosystem. First, it presents the history of the development and commercial introduction of DAB. Then, it shows the DAB ecosystem consisting of a set of different standards. Next, the article presents the basic principles of the DAB physical layer and the audio compression. Finally, the document explains the data transport coding with the intended applications and the commercial deployment of DAB.