In Italy, radio is one of the most popular media, thanks to its immediacy and ubiquity. DAB+ is the technology chosen by most European countries for the digital evolution of radio. Reliability, sound quality, transmission efficiency, energy efficiency, textual and graphic information services: DAB+ Digital Radio overcomes analogue radio in several ways.

The standard has been successfully adopted by several European countries: as Norway, Germany, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Netherlands, Denmark, Italy. Among them, Norway has begun the FM switch-off at the beginning of 2017, and other countries have plans for the Digital Switch-Over.

WiB  (Wideband Reuse-1 Broadcasting) is a new system concept for DTT where potentially all frequencies within the Ultra High Frequency (UHF) band are used on all transmitter  sites (i.e. reuse-1).

Rai is planning to extend DAB+ services to the most important Italian urban areas and to the motorways (including service continuity in tunnels). Radio service transmission inside tunnels requires methods such as the installation of radiating cables (“leaky-feeders”) along the tunnel ceiling. This approach is costly, thus leading RAI Research Center to investigate the feasibility of an alternative approach using direct RF irradiation by means of antennas positioned outside the tunnels (not far from the entrance) or internally.

In the modern digital age, a big challenge lies in the ability of collecting, connecting, analysing and presenting heterogeneous content streams, accessible through different sources, and published through different media modalities. At this purpose, the project is aiming at identifying an end-to-end workflow for data driven journalism.

This programme deals with the experimentation of new IP technologies (networks, protocols, standards, equipment) in the area of television production, and particularly for studio applications.