Vatican City - Jan 12, 2012 - DRM reports that Vatican Radio carried out DRM+ trials on VHF band II in Rome during December 2011 on a frequency of 103.8MHz using 200W. The frequency allocation came from the GE-84 agreement and the transmission was performed by switching the broadcast to digital during time slots that were free in the normal program schedule. The digital transmitter used the same antenna system as that of the analog and was combined with three other FM frequencies.

The antenna, located in Vatican City, is a 10-bay omnidirectional system elliptically polarized. During tests coverage measurements and coverage comparisons between analog and digital were performed. Support for the trials was provided by other DRM Consortium members. Nautel provided a VS1 FM/DRM+ transmitter and VS-DRM digital exciter. Fraunhofer IIS supplied a Fraunhofer DRM ContentServer R5 - Professional Edition, for the DRM+ multiplex signal generation. RFmondial provided an LV6m DRM+ modulator and a DRM+ Measurement Receiver Professional. The transmission test results will be published soon.