SomeNetBlog

Digital Radio

This past Saturday I spent the day at a seminar with a bunch of ham radio people. The ARRL Alabama Section hosted the conference in Huntsville, which was supported and sponsored by local radio/computer superstore GigaParts. This was a grand event with probably 100 folks from all around; Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Canada, Chicago, Virginia - to name a few. The Alabama Repeater Link System has become a test site for a new digital technology, known as D-Star; brought to market by Icom.

D-Star is an open-standard developed for Amateur Radio use in Japan, to bring ham radio up to current digital transmission methodology. Hams have always been in the fore-front of communications technology, but it takes a pretty good leap to jump from analog to digital. Recognizing that the broadcast world is already embracing the new Hi-Def standards for voice and video, we hams don’t have the luxury of big budgets and ample bandwidth, and appear to have fallen behind. This system looks to be a viable entry point, especially since it is the first commercially available. Considering the future will demand better spectral efficiencies, we need to focus on this and do what hams do best, innovate … The demand for an integrated voice/data transport system has it’s roots in the hams’ agenda to provide functionally reliable emergency communications. In some respects D-Star already demonstrates some powerful solutions that rival commercial applications.

While this new system may still have some rough edges, it appears to be off to a solid start. Think of your radio as an extension of your ethernet. Think of the internet as a high-speed full-duplex link between repeaters. Think of your callsign being a unique IP address. Think of the future, this technology is in it’s infancy and needs folks like us to mold and shape it into what we need and want.

There is way more to this topic than I can squeeze into an introductory post tonite, but I’ll be back with more followup links and discussion (please join in). I do want to thank Alabama Section Manager Greg Sarratt - W4OZK, for the personal invitation to attend this session and participate in the Alabama Link project. Thanks also to the group from ICOM, the Texas-Interconnect-Team, and especially to Gigaparts for their support. A lot of folks learned a lot of stuff, and had a great time.

Lets get to work now. /;^)