DAB +: nationwide radio warning service to wake up sleeping radios – first devices at the IFA

• A new nationwide warning service for the digital radio standard DAB+ is planned.
• This is intended to warn the radio audience of natural disasters and other dangers.
• The service should come in 2023, but the first compatible devices will already be presented at IFA 2022.

DAB+ is the digital radio standard of the future – and should now also become a disaster warning system for the population. In order to inform people about acute dangerous situations, the digital radios are to be integrated into a nationwide emergency network in the future, which will warn quickly and reliably in an emergency.

Warning system wakes DAB radios from st andby mode

Timely warnings in the event of a disaster save lives – and the flood disaster in the Ahr Valley in the summer of 2021 showed once again that such warnings have not yet been given reliably. A patented technology from the Fraunhofer Institute is now intended to ensure that a disaster alarm reaches at least those households that have digital radio. In addition, the devices should also wake up from standby mode if such a warning message occurs.

The warnings will also arrive in standard car radios built after 2020 – because since then it has been mandatory to equip new car radios with DAB+ in Germany. The association Digitalradio Deutschland eV expects the project to be implemented extensively within two to three years, and the first production models with the new function could be on the market as early as 2023.

The first models with the new warning function can already be seen at the IFA 2022 at the Telestar stand. You can find this at exhibition space 224 in hall 1.2 at the Berlin electronics trade fair.