WorldDAB member focus: RedwoodComm

01.08.2022 - RedwoodComm Co., Ltd. - South Korea

by Rebecca Keene, Stakeholder Relations Manager, WorldDAB

Q&A with Darby Cho, Principal Engineer, RedwoodComm

RedwoodComm has recently joined WorldDAB as a member, please could you explain a bit about your main reasons for joining and what you hope to get out of your membership?

First of all, we are very proud to be a new member of WorldDAB under the name of RedwoodComm. RedwoodComm was established in 2011, but starting with DMB earlier than that, we have members with more than 20 years of experience in digital radio test fields such as DAB and DRM. We joined to share our diverse experiences and know-how with WorldDAB members and find out if there is anything we can contribute to WorldDAB. In line with the latest technology and market trends obtained through WorldDAB, we will do our best to identify new needs for receiver development and provide optimal test solutions to customers. Through this, we want to contribute to the continuous development of WorldDAB as well as the successful deployment and stable maintenance of DAB.

What markets does your company support and what solutions do you provide?

RedwoodComm is a leading developer and manufacturer of test solutions for wireless communication technologies. Based on long-term accumulated technology and know-how, we have provided complex test solutions that can perform various functional tests and performance tests to contribute to the development and production of digital radio receivers. Regarding DAB/DAB+, we not only provide an ETI file player that allows users to play their own ETI files, but also provide users with a more flexible development environment by embedding the Ensemble multiplexer. Therefore, users are not limited to a fixed parameter broadcasting environment such as ETI, and can more easily simulate various environments that may occur in the field in the lab.

Can you tell us about your most recent projects?

As soon as we released RWC2010B, we started to provide a free software tool to help users easily simulate Service (Seamless) Linking. Under the pandemic situation of recent years, the demand for simulation in the lab has increased as it is not easy to test in the real field. In close cooperation with major chipset and receiver manufacturing customers, we have identified customer needs such as test conditions and key parameters required for simulation. The newly developed service linking test tool can connect up to four units of RedwoodComm products and has the function of broadcasting 12 services from four stations at the same time. In addition to detailed settings for each service, complex parameters required for linking can be easily edited or automatically created in the tool. It is also possible to define a power profile to simulate the change in the transmission power of services around the receiver in motion.

What do your customers value most from your solutions?

It is a wide range of functional tests created as a result of quickly and flexibly responding to technical updates and customer requirements. Functional tests such as Announcement, Reconfiguration, Alternative Frequency, etc can be performed by a simple operation. Among them, the Service Linking function enables testing of linking between services of complex combinations using multiple equipment; DAB-DAB, DAB-FM, DAB-DRM, DRM-FM, FM-FM, etc. By providing the ability to adjust the relative audio delays between different services, it is even possible to test Seamless Linking to ensure perfect linking without audio discontinuities between services. A service linking test tool that can be linked with two RedwoodComm products makes all these processes easy and intuitive.

What advice would you give someone considering deploying DAB?

DAB provides not only audio services but also powerful multimedia features such as DLS, EPG, SLS, etc. compared to analogue radio. In addition, functions such as service linking, reconfiguration, announcement, etc. provide many conveniences and benefits. In order to develop and release DAB products, it is essential to test the above various functions but testing with real broadcast signals is not easy. We recommend that you try our solutions in various environments in the lab. With the ETI file player function and the built-in Ensemble multiplexer function, the RWC2010B Digital Radio Tester will provide users with various experiences and a rich test environment. It will help users to easily simulate the environment possible in the real field in the lab.