STMicroelectronics and Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS have signed an agreement to jointly develop a low power Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) for Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) applications.

Riccardo Ferrari, General Manager Digital Broadcasting Radio Division of ST's Automotive Product Group said that: "By combining Fraunhofer IIS's technologies and intellectual-property rights on DRM base-band processing into a final dedicated platform of integrated circuits, STMicroelectronics, supported in system's validation by Tele Diffusion de France (TDF), will provide leading-edge infotainment solutions able to excite the radio market in the upcoming years."

Some of these applications are anything from portable radios and car receivers to PDAs. DRM is an open standard digital radio system available in long-wave, medium-wave and short-wave frequencies. The DRM system has the advantage of providing a better audio quality and interference-free reception, and, unlike digital radio systems; it uses the existing Amplitude Modulation (AM) broadcast frequencies below 30MHz more efficiently.

Michael Schlicht, Group Manager Integrated Circuits for Communication Systems and Program Manager Digital Broadcast Systems, Fraunhofer IIS said: "Radio makers, broadcasters, and listeners can benefit from Fraunhofer's collaboration with an industry-leading company like STMicroelectronics. Using our DRM receiver technology and the Audio Coding Library provided by Coding Technologies, ST can deliver all of the components to produce a complete solution for DRM."

Fraunhofer IIS is known for the work they've done in the audio business, and their line of work also includes research services in areas such as multimedia realtime systems, digital radio broadcasting and digital cinema systems. Their partnership with semiconductor manufacturer, STMicroelectronics is said to create an ASIC which will allow consumers to set their radios using station names or IDs, while multimedia content such as track title, artist name and station name can be displayed on DRM receivers.