AN EFFICIENT APPROACH OF AUDIO DECODING FOR BOTH DAB

AND DAB+ STANDARDS

SWATHI K S
PG Scholar, Dept. of ECE, DBIT
Bangalore, Karnataka, India

SHRUTHI G
Assistant Professor, Dept. of ECE, DBIT
Bangalore, Karnataka, India

ABSTRACT Beginning of Radio broadcasting largely took place in Europe and encountered
noble circumstances in Senegal. Over time Radio broadcasting was recognized as one of the most
preferred medium for circulating the information, which led to numerous improvements in terms
of the technology used in Radio broadcasting. The original digital radio broadcasting technology
was developed in Europe and was known as Eureka-147 Digital Audio Broadcasting system. This
new system that was developed distributed a very high quality audio and data facilities to both
fixed and mobile receivers. DAB was further enhanced, leading to the growth of DAB+ radios.
Since DAB+ receivers are quite expensive, it is most serviceable to develop a receiver that is well-
suited to both DAB and DAB+ standards Therefore in order to deliver most efficient way of audio
decoding for both DAB and DAB+ standards, a solution merging both MPEG-4 and Advance
Audio Coding(AAC) Low complexity (LC) decoder which used merely an ASIC approach is
proposed. The simulation is performed using MATLAB and the comparison of both the standards
is shown in the form of a waveform. The proposed paper can further be optimized to design a chip
that can deliver both DAB and DAB+ standards and thus minimizing the power consumption and
area.

INTRODUCTION

Radio broadcasting technology has been established as one of the most universally stretched
electronic mass media, constituting several program providers, HF transmitters and huge number
of radio receivers. During the initial developments, the broadcasting industry was extensively
exposed to AM and FM standards. These standards provide huge Varity of audio services to the
audience. But currently we are in a world of digital communication schemes and services. Hence,
since the world is moving from Analog to Digital standards, the development methods in Radio
industry is to changing from analog to digital services to provide best performance and satisfactory
budget, this has led to the development of Digital Audio Broadcasting.

For efficient transferring of audio information, audio data has to be compressed. To perform audio
data compression, several audio compression techniques have been developed. Moving Pictures
Experts Group is one of the widely used audio coding standard. The first MPEG audio standard
developed was MPEG1-Layer 1(MP1) and was initially used in VCD systems. Now MP1is
replaced by various other MPEG audio standards and MP1 is now completely obsolete. Then
developed was MPEG2, which completely replaced MP1. A new audio coding standard called
Advance Audio coding was introduced in MPEG2 to improve the compression rate. In MPEG4,
high efficiency AAC (aacplus or HE AAC) was introduced by merging AAC LC and spectrum
band Replication technique. AACplus was further updated to aacplus V2(also called as HE AAC
V2 or eAAC+) by introducing Parametric Stereo technology and is now known as one of the best
effective coding standard but it is also the most complicated standard. The Digital Audio
broadcasting technology was developed in 1995 and was used in several countries because of high
spectrum efficiency. In 2006 DAB was further advanced to DAB+ by using HE AAC V2
technique. DAB+ provides higher spectrum efficiency by implementing HE AAC V2 technique
and thus includes both Spectrum band Replication technique and Parametric Stereo technique.
Implementation of SBR and PS technique increases complexity, patent fee and are very expensive.
Hence it is more advantageous to decode DAB+ programs using AAC LC algorithm.

The proposed paper provides a solution for audio decoding of both DAB and DAB+ programs by
using MP4 and AAC LC decoders. Proposed MP4 decoder can decode DAB programs and AAC
LC algorithm can decode DAB+ programs. The suggested paper uses AAC LC algorithm to
decode DAB+ programs which is simple and more efficient standard than the decoders used in
previous papers and is suitable for high bit rate programs unlike HE AAC V2 which is more
suitable for low bit rate programs. This solution thus proves to be more efficient way of decoding
DAB and DAB+ programs. The proposed solution further be enhanced to design a chip that can
decode both DAB and DAB+ services and hence can decrease power consumption.

ANALYSIS

The two main factors used by DAB+ are SBR and PS techniques and by using AAC instead of
MP4. SBR and PS techniques disregard high frequency components and stereo material and then
enlighten the high frequency feature and stereo effect slightly by some special technique but not to
the same quality. Hence HE AAC V2 is used mainly in low data level application. For Digital
Audio Broadcasting data rate restriction is not so severe. In case of DAB, all high level audio
programs are aired at high bit rate of 128kb/s or 160kb/s or more using MP2 decoder and for
DAB+ programs at high bit rate, techniques such as SBR and PS are not used because they are
suitable for low bit rate programs are they involve more complex forms of processing and they
increase the difficulty to a very significant level. Hence it raises a very serious question that is it
worth implementing both the techniques only for the improvement of low bit rate programs. Few
countries like U.K. have still adopted basic DAB and have no plans of upgrading to DAB+ but
other countries like Australia and Germany adopted DAB+ and faced more difficulty. Difficulties
involve less choice and more costly DAB+ radio sets and was not as easy as DAB implementation.
Countries that have adopted DAB+ have been probably been misguided since DAB+ is sounds as
the advance form of DAB standard. Hence many countries that have adopted DAB have no
strategies to upgrade DAB to DAB+. Hence it is more beneficial to develop sets that are
compatible to both DAB and DAB+ standards. These radios must have acceptable price range and
less power consumption or else they might not be recognized by present DAB market. This
presents high difficulty for the implementation of DAB+. SBR and PS techniques are considered
as the more important blocks in DAB+ audio decoding because they are the most problematical
blocks and they take more than half of the design. To overcome this complications, it is more
easier to implement AAC LC algorithm to decode DAB+ programs and it doesnt not matter if
these programs use SBR and PS techniques. The implementation of these two techniques are quite
expensive than compared to AAC LC algorithm. Hence the proposed solution involves:
i. MP4 decoder to decode all DAB programs
ii. AAC LC decoder to decode all DAB+ programs
iii. Does not implement SBR and PS techniques to avoid the programming complexity

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 Fig.1: Diagram of DAB and DAB+ compatible receiver

The compatible receiver as shown in the above figure can thus be developed after decoding both
DAB and DAB+ programs using the proposed algorithms. And also the decoding upholds good
excellence for high bit rate programs and in case of low bit rate programs the decoded program
might be poorer to some extent but will be satisfactory.

SOLUTION

Few countries have approved DAB+ as its radio broadcasting standard and therefore the receivers
that can receive only DAB programs are certainly not helpful to such countries.DAB+ receivers
are very costly and since more often both DAB and DAB+ transmissions are from the same
transmitter, the best resolution is development of receivers that are well-matched to both the
standards. These receivers that are compatible to both the standards can be developed based on the
algorithm used in the proposed paper. Since DAB and DAB+ cannot share same audio decoder, a
receiver integrating both MP4 decoder and AAC LC decoder to decode both DAB and DAB+
programs is required and is shown in fig.1.

Architectural Optimization
Both MP4 and AAC LC decoders are based on psychoacoustic models for the compression of the
audio files. So even if both the decoders have separate algorithms for audio decoding, the flow
charts of both the decoders are quite similar and both algorithms are shown in fig.2 and fig.3. As
shown the flow charts, both the decoders have IDCT and filter blocks and these blocks are more
complicated blocks and take most of the computation. This indicates that both the decoders can
share most of the circuitry, thus saving power consumption and silicon area. The proposed paper
provides simulation result in MATLAB, but this can be optimized and implemented as a receiver
that can decode both the programs. Fig.2 and Fig.3 shows MP4 and AAC LC algorithm used for
decoding both the programs. The sample audio is given as a input to MP4 decoder , the inverse
quantization block takes the samples and perform inverse quantization computations and a filter is
used to remove the unwanted components and the decompressed file is obtained as an output from
MP4 decoder and simulation is performed in MATLAB and a waveform is obtained which is
further converted to an audio form and the de the de compressed sample audio can be heard
through the speaker. For DAB+ decoding, an AAC LC decoder is used , sample audio is taken as
the input to the AAC LC decoder by using inverse quantization block, inverse quantization
computations are obtained, which are then sent for pre processing process. The pre processing
process is performed by M/S decoder and PNS decoder is used to calculate the noise ratio in order
to eliminate the unwanted noise present in the sample audio. After eliminating the noise, IS
decoder is used to find the threshold range of the audio to find only the non zero elements. A filter

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 Fig 2. MP4 Decoder

Fig 3. AACLC Decoder

is then used to remove the unwanted noise present in all the samples. Huffman decoder reduced
the redundancy.

Low Power Consumption Design

The proposed design can be considered as a low power consumption design. Firstly because of
eliminating SBR and PS techniques which are more complex and consume more power. The
second reason is that both MP2 and AAC LC decoders are not working at the same time, hence

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when one decoder is active, the other decoder can be shut down thus saving power. And since
there are various blocks in each decoder and all the blocks are active at different times, the block
which is inactive can be shut down to save power. For example when M/S decoder is active , other
blocks such as Inverse quantization, TNS decoder can all be shut down to save power

TEST

Simulation Results: Simulation is performed for both the proposed decoders and the waveform
obtained for both the decoders can be compared and it can be proved that DAB+ is more efficient
than DAB. The proposed paper can also be simulated in Xilinx. In order to implement the
proposed paper in Xilinx, the audio sample should be first converted to text file using MATLAB
and the text file can be taken as input to the Xilinx and the text file can be processed and power
consumption can be calculated, it can be seen that the power consumption for DAB+ will be less
than the power consumption of DAB standard. The implementation can be finally done on the
hardware. Both MP4 and AAC LC decoders can be implemented on the FPGA kit , and a chip that
can decode both DAB and DAB+ can be designed.

CONCLUSION

In the proposed paper both the advantages of using AAC LC decoder and disadvantages of HE
AAC V2 decoder is analyzed. The techniques such as SBR and PS used in HE AAC V2 are
suitable for low bit rate programs and have very less effect on high bitrate programs. The main
point for recognizing Digital Audio programs is to provide a low power design for DAB+
receivers. The proposed decoder can be optimized and a DAB and DAB+ compatible receiver can
be developed using the proposed algorithms. The receiver thus developed overcomes the conflicts
of both the irreconcilable standards. The receiver will be highly useful to digital radio industry.
The result of simulation using MATLAB is shown.

FUTURE WORK

MP2 and AAC LC decoding system are designed for Dab and DAB+ programs. The proposed
blocks can be simulated in Xilinx and can analyze the power consumption and area occupied by
the architecture. Future work is to implement the proposed design using FPGA SPARTAN6

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