The present document specifies a transmission protocol, which allows to broadcast various kinds of data using the Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) system. It is tailored to the needs of Multimedia services and the specific constraints given by the broadcasting characteristics of the DAB system. After reception this data can be processed and presented to the user.

The present document defines the transport specific encoding for data types not specified in EN 300 401 [1] according to the transport mechanisms provided by DAB. It allows a flexible utilization of the data channels incorporated in the DAB system, as well as methods to manage and maintain a reliable transmission in a uni-directional broadcast environment. Provisions are also made for the creation and presentation of advanced Multimedia services using formats such as Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) (see RFC 2854 [2]) or Multimedia and Hypermedia information coding Experts Group (MHEG) (see ISO/IEC 13522 [3]).

The present document describes the core transport protocol. Subsequent parts or revisions of the present document will describe backwards compatible extensions.

Aspects related to the further decoding and processing of the data objects carried are outside the scope of the present document. Hardware implementation considerations are not covered.