The Staff Training Institute (Technical) of All India Radio has conducted a training workshop on Digital Radio Transmission in New Delhi (India) from 3rd to 11th Dec 2012 in collaboration with the Asia Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD,) Kuala Lumpur. In addition to participants from stations and offices of All India Radio in the country, ten participants from seven countries namely Bhutan, Nepal, Malaysia, Mozambique, Maldives, Thailand and (Abuja) Nigeria also took part in this sub-regional training programme. Amongst the topics discussed in the workshop were the relative merits and de-merits and the additional available features of the different available global digital broadcast systems. Since All India Radio has adopted the DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale) system for the digitisation of its MW and SW transmitters, the DRM system is being covered in detail. Demonstrations on the working of DRM transmitters, modes of operation, settings, measurements etc were also shown during the course, using a 10 kW MW DRM mobile transmitter and a SW transmitter.

I had the opportunity to speak on “The Digitisation of the Radio Network in India” in this programme and to interact with the participants. The participants showed a keen and genuine interest in the session understanding why it is important to digitise radio transmissions in their countries.

Yogendra Pal, Hon Chair – India Chapter of DRM Consortium