03 Oct Receiving DRM in the FM band on mobile phones without external SDR dongles – Your Question Answered
Our best specialists will respond in brief to your questions. We will post them regularly. Please submit them in writing and in audio with your picture and we will post the answers here. Please keep your questions short and relevant and send them to: projectoffice@drm.
Is it possible to receive DRM digital radio signals in the FM band on mobile phones without external SDR dongles?
(Dr Rao, India)
Yes, all a mobile phone needs to receive DRM in the FM band is an analogue FM front-end tuner chip, as available in many phone models in the market. The tricky part is to gain access to the raw IQ data provided by this tuner chip (IQ represents the raw digitized on-air signal around the tuned frequency, similar to the PCM format for audio sound cards). Current phone chipsets do not include this option, as it has not been a requirement in the past. DRM receiver software on mobile phones such as the STARWAVES DRM SoftRadio radio app is readily available today and can be downloaded from various app stores; providing DRM decoding on Android phones/tablets by connecting external analogue FM dongles via USB.
For the future, once India and other countries have extended the deployment of DRM to the FM band and ideally even mandated support in mobile phones, there is no reason why future phone models will not natively support DRM reception in the FM band in parallel to legacy analogue FM signals. (No additional hardware components (i.e. cost will be required – only access to the raw IQ data from the FM front-end tuner chip must be enabled by the device’s chipset and board design.)
