RDS Technical Specification – 2 – RDS Forum TS © 2008
Purpose of this newly upgraded RDS specification
This new version of the RDS specification, the fifth one, since the original one was published by the EBU in 1984, contains a number of
major upgrades of the RDS technology, that are fully compatible with the large number of already existing RDS receivers. They will enable
new functionalities in future generations of RDS receivers.
This RDS Forum specification bridges the gap created by the very long IEC standard development procedure in place within the IEC. The
RDS Forum is a participant of this work, but cannot influence the speed in which it progresses. In early 2008 it is estimated that if the
present proposal is adopted as IEC 62106 Edition 2, then it will only officially be issued in 2010. As however RDS receivers are now
produced in very large numbers (more than 200 million units each year), this slow process of handling the upgrading of the RDS standard
within the IEC, can in fact delay the implementation of the new technology. To avoid that this would happen, the RDS Forum has decided to
publish the newly proposed upgraded version of the RDS standard, as its own Technical Specification. Attention is drawn to the fact that the
IEC standard development process in place can result in editorial changes to be made to this present text. Technical changes are however
very unlikely, as this specification was developed in the RDS Forum with the full involvement of the industry using the RDS technology.
The industry represented in the RDS Forum accepts that the RDS technology develops in steps on the basis of slowly building a consensus
among all the actors involved. A continuous and unilaterally sought development by individual companies is however not wanted, and
therefore a technology change of this present concept is very unlikely, before the official IEC standard 62106, Edition 2 will be published
around 2010. RDS Forum industry members are thus committed to that their national standardisation bodies collaborating with the IEC will
endorse the present newly upgraded RDS specification, which is the result of much work done over several years now within the RDS
Forum. Parts of the new technology that this document contains were already previously published as RDS Forum documents.
Document history
1984 EBU First RDS specification and 4 supplements – docTech 3244 & supplements
1990 CENELEC RDS specification issued as European industry standard EN 50067:1990
1992 CENELEC Newly upgraded RDS standard EN 50067:1992
1998 CENELEC Newly upgraded RDS standard EN 50067:1998
2000 IEC Re-issue of CENELEC RDS standard, world-wide as IEC 62106, Edition 1
2008 RDS Forum Newly upgraded RDS specification proposed to IEC as IEC 62106, Edition 2
What is new in this version of the RDS specification?
− ARI, a former traffic information technology, has been discontinued and all earlier references are now deleted, with the
background being explained in Annex H.
− CT needed a wider range to express local time offsets; this has been corrected now.
− RDS-TMC is separately standardised in ISO; all references to this packet of standards were updated
− Offst word E in Annex A was deleted, as it is no longer needed for RBDS.
− The list of RDS country codes, inclusive the extended county codes, has been updated in Annexes D and N.
− Annex E, containing the character code tables to be used in RDS was updated. Initially there were three optional character tables.
The proposed coding was no longer inline with the relevant ISO character coding standard. De facto only character table E.1 was
used and this has now been declared to be the basic character table. Enhanced RadioText is now proposed in Annex Q for use in
those countries, where the basic character table is insufficient and they
may instead use the extended RDS character table E.2,
designed to support all languages used in Europe, at least.
− RadioText Plus has been added as a new feature in Annex P. This was jointly developed by Nokia, the WDR and the IRT in
Germany. It permits among other possibilities to tag ‘music titles’ and ‘artist names’ in the RadioText feature to create play lists.
This feature is already implemented by some public broadcasters in Germany and it was also tested with success in the United
States, where it is likely that RBDS will now adopt the same technology.
− Annex R was added to explain briefly what is common and what is different between RDS elsewhere and RBDS in the USA; it is
possible and sometimes even desirable to design receivers that work with both systems. The IC chips used are the same.
About the RDS Forum
The RDS Forum is a non-profit international professional industry association that has as an objective to promote and maintain the RDS
technology, which was developed by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) in the early eighties as an open system to enhance FM
broadcasting, primarily to enable automated tuning in FM radio receivers equipped with that then new technology.
Nowadays, almost 25 years later after that technology was created, almost all FM radios use RDS. ICs have become available that have an
FM receiver and an RDS decoder on the same chip and the price for such a chip, if bought in quantities, is now extremely low, say to give
the magnitude, only one to three Euro. The trend of this price is still falling and the quantity of such chips sold on the world market is still
much increasing, now over 200 million units per year already. Many applications of RDS are nowadays already within mobile phones and
portable network devices. The more traditional car radios have sometimes a separate RDS decoder IC, but RDS decoding is very often an
integral part of dedicated multi-purpose DSPs, necessary for the product even without RDS. In these products the RDS function price is then
almost zero, as it is done in software only.
It was actually RDS that made FM broadcasting very successful and extremely widespread. The RDS technology will most probably live as
long as FM broadcasting, which most likely will end as the last analogue broadcasting technology of which any possible switch-off, much
talked about by regulators, is impossible to predict at this time, given the fact that FM broadcasting is so widely used now.
The RDS Forum was founded in 1993 and serves its members also as an efficient contact network for experience exchange regarding the use
and correct implementation of the technology in the many different countries involved. Maintenance means not only keeping the RDS
system correctly going as originally conceived by the EBU, but also upgrading it, maintaining full compatibility with the very large number
of existing RDS receivers, to enable new functionalities that have only recently become available for implementation in new RDS receiver
generations.
RDS Forum members are many world-wide known companies that include
2wcom in Germany, Audemat-Aztec in France, Autosound Electronic in Hong Kong, Best Creative in China, Blaupunkt Werke in Germany,
Cambridge Silicon Radio in the UK, Catena Radio Design in the Netherlands, the Swiss Private Radio Association, Clarion Europe, Clear
Channel Broadcasting in the USA, Continental Automotive in France, the Denon Brand Company in Japan, Data FM in the USA, Delphi
Grundig in Germany, Digita Oy in Finland, Globalsat Technology Corp. in Taiwan, GNM in the UK, Harman Becker Automotive Systems
in Ger
many, Hyundai Autonet Co. in Korea, Institut für Rundfunktechnik in Germany, ItoM in the Netherlands, JVC Technology Centre
Europe, Kenwood Electronics Europe, KRS Electronics Co., LG Electronics, MC&T Electronics in Korea, Media Broadcast in Germany,
Mitsubishi Electric Automotive Europe, Nokia, OFCOM in the UK, Pioneer, Profline in the Netherlands, Qbit in Germany, Ruoss AG in
Switzerland, Silicon Labs in the UK, Sony, Swiss Broadcasting Corp. (SRG/SSR), Swisscom Broadcast AG, TomTom International, Visteon
Engineering Services in the UK, Vlaamse Radio en Televisieomroep VRT in Belgium and WiWi Industries in Hong Kong. The internet
address for the RDS Forum web site is URL http://www.rds.org.uk/. The
RDS Forum Office is in Geneva, Switzerland.
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life1012flower2013-02-17该资料比较详细，属于基本的RDS手册，一些RDS具体细节还要自己研究。
