D-Star takes Amateur Radio into the future

D-STAR, a standard published in 2001, is the result of three years of research funded by the Japanese government and administered by the JARL to investigate digital technologies for amateur radio.

The research involved Japanese radio manufacturers and other observers. Icom provided the equipment used for development and testing.

D-STAR is an open protocol - although it is published by JARL, it is available to be implemented by anyone.

While Icom is the only company to date that manufactures
D-STAR-compatible radios, any equipment or software that supports the D-STAR protocol will work with a D-STAR system. D-STAR systems can be built using both commercial and homebrew equipment and software.

In a D-STAR system, the air link portion of the protocol applies to signals travelling between radios or between a radio and a repeater. D-STAR radios can talk directly to each other without any intermediate equipment or through a repeater using D-STAR voice or data transceivers.

The gateway portion of the protocol applies to the digital interface between D-STAR repeaters. D-STAR also specifies how a voice signal is converted to and from streams of digital data, a function called a codec.

The D-STAR codec is known as AMBE® (Advanced Multi-Band Excitation) and the voice signal is transmitted in the D-STAR system at 3 600 bits/second (3,6 kbps).

Simply said, D-STAR is like voice over packet radio!

Courtesy of The South African Radio League