DAB+ is a European digital radio system, not a certificate issued by one body. The air-interface specification for the DAB system comes from ETSI as EN 300 401; it governs the transmission format between transmitter and receiver, and it does not reach the compliance testing of a receiver. A receiver's route into the European Union is RED 2014/53/EU, with the EN 303 345 series as the harmonised standards and EN 303 345-4 as the DAB volume. Plenty of enquiries arrive asking for a DAB certification quote, and what comes back is rarely the same thing twice. Broken down properly, the cost is four accounts, and each is paid to a different party.
Receivers sit inside RED as well. Article 2 brings equipment that intentionally receives radio waves for radiocommunication into the definition of radio equipment, so a receive-only DAB+ radio is still caught. Receiving does not place it outside.
Reception performance is a mandatory item, with no optional version of it. Article 3.2 sets the general requirement, that equipment neither causes harmful interference nor fails to use the spectrum efficiently; the parameters and limits that follow from it - sensitivity, adjacent channel selectivity, unwanted emissions - sit in EN 303 345.
Where a product receives DAB, FM and AM together, the standards are EN 303 345-4, -3 and -2 respectively. Test items have to cover all three, but they can be consolidated into a single report. Quoting them as three separate reports is a familiar way of marking the price up, so write the report scope into the commission at kick-off.
Older DAB uses MPEG-1 Layer II; DAB+ uses HE-AAC v2. Decoder conformance is not a RED requirement, so where a channel wants both systems supported, the item is scheduled separately.
Decoder licensing is another account entirely. HE-AAC v2 patents are licensed mainly through a pool, originally MPEG LA and now Via LA, charged against unit shipments and landing in component cost; the laboratory does not issue that invoice. Some chip solutions have it cleared at the factory, and buying those means it does not have to be counted again. Declare the full set of systems at filing, because adding one later means re-queueing the testing.
Functional items roll with the specification. The recent addition is emergency alerting. The ASA mechanism was developed by WorldDAB together with Digitalradio Deutschland, and the ASA DE service went live in Germany on 10 September 2026 over the first federal multiplex, 5C. A radio needs the ASA certification mark before it will wake from standby and play the alert, and more than 35 certified models were already on the German market at launch. Whether the receiver end follows is a channel requirement rather than a regulatory one.
Chip selection feeds back into the test list. An RF solution with pre-test registration behind it can skip part of the baseline, while switching to one without adds screening work. Keep the sample locked to production state and the firmware frozen: a remediation round pushes the schedule out by two to three weeks, and a change to the RF hardware means running it again.
Marking and product database registration sit with WorldDAB. This is an industry scheme and voluntary, with nothing mandatory about it at the regulatory level. European carmakers and large retail chains do recognise it, though, and without a database entry and a trademark licence the mark cannot be applied. Among the enquiries that come in, eight out of ten ask about the mark before anything else.
This is a third account, alongside laboratory test fees and the administrative charges levied by national authorities, and it is not the place to start haggling.
Where several markets are involved, the first job is separating EU-level requirements from channel thresholds, because the payee is different in each case.
The UK needs its own sentence. Since October 2024 the GB market has recognised CE marking indefinitely, radio equipment is on the recognised list, and UKCA is not a compulsory step. Australia and New Zealand with RCM, and local approvals across the Middle East and Southeast Asia, are the ones that are genuinely independent and not mutually waived. One device aimed at three markets, run on one set of samples with multiple reports, costs less than sending it out separately.
On the in-car side there is a point that is often stated wrongly. The requirement comes from Article 113 and Annex XI of the European Electronic Communications Code, Directive (EU) 2018/1972; its legal basis is neither RED nor the vehicle e-mark. From 21 December 2020, M category passenger vehicles placed on the EU market have had to carry a radio capable of receiving and reproducing digital terrestrial radio. This covers every member state and has nothing to do with how far DAB has been rolled out in any one of them; Germany, France, Italy and Denmark legislated before the directive took effect. Europe's mainstream implementation is DAB+, so in practice projects are planned on that basis, and in-car programmes are scheduled alongside vehicle EMC work under UN R10.
Notified body fees are the item that turns up unnecessarily. Car and home radios are low-risk receiving equipment, and full application of the harmonised standards with a self-signed declaration of conformity is enough, so a notified body should not be the default. Where a project steps outside the harmonised standards and takes another assessment route, that step cannot be avoided.
Standards and channel requirements both move, and applying an old position to a new job goes wrong easily. With the route undecided, any price quoted is guesswork; when these enquiries reach BlueAsia, the route is the first question and the quote comes after.
Contact: King Email: king.guo@cblueasia.comAddress: Building C, Hongjingda Industrial Park, No. 107 Beihuan Road, Shiyan Street, Bao'an District, Shenzhen, China BlueAsia delivers more than service!
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