RF performance of T-DAB receivers

In every wireless system, the weakest link determines the performance of the network. In this paper the Radio Frequency (RF) performance of both band III and L-band Terrestrial Digital Audio Broadcasting (T-DAB) consumer receivers are discussed. The receivers have been tested based on the EN 50248 standard. The test results show that the average consumer receiver for band III meets the requirements set by EN 50248, except for the non-adjacent interferer experiments. In this experiment, the average consumer receiver performs up to 10 dB worse than required. In addition, the experiments reveal that there is a large difference in performance between consumer receivers. Besides band III, also L-band consumer receivers have been evaluated. The results of the L-band experiments show that the consumer receivers are not capable of decoding a DAB signal with a COST207 rural area channel model in case of T-DAB mode IV. Network operators should for this reason use mode II for the L-band and should expect a larger influence of non-adjacent interference on receiver performance in band III than anticipated based on EN 50248.