DSTAR/P25 ham

A forum for the discussion of all aspects of amateur radio, but with emphasis on amateur radio operation in our coverage area. HF, VHF, UHF, P25, DStar, packet, anything amateur radio related is welcome here.
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KB1UAM

DSTAR/P25 ham

Post by KB1UAM »

are these two modes of operating the same exact thing? i am just getting into DSTAR and do not fully understand. can these be monitored on digital scanners?
KB1NVI
Posts: 259
Joined: 03 May 2007 19:13
Location: Hamilton, MA

Post by KB1NVI »

Well they are both digital voice systems but they use different modulation (c4FM/CQPSK for P25 and GMSK? for DSTAR) etc and are totally incompatible. P25 was developed for Public Safety and can be monitored by a digital capable scanner. DSTAR was developed for amateur radio (by the Japanese ARL I think) and I'm not aware of any scanner (except perhaps the receivers made by icom???) that can decode DSTAR.
Chris - KB1NVI
ScanBoston
Super Idiot
Posts: 3974
Joined: 19 Aug 2005 12:00
Location: Boston Area
Contact:

Post by ScanBoston »

They are incompatible as stated above but an interesting side note is that the codecs for both are made and licensed to Digital Voice Systems Inc http://www.dvsinc.com in Westford MA. P25 or is a standard also called APCO project25 which had several codec manufacturers competing for a standard that then was approved by both APCO and the Federal government as their Phase1 standard. The same company designed a Codec standard for ICOM that is call D-STAR. Other manufacturers can use it but none do as of yet and probably none will ever at this point. Yaesu has already announced they plan to use their own standard a variant of TDMA. With Moto-Turbo, NexEdge, IDAS their are many digital formats out their and few are compatible. IDAS-NEXedge is the only exception I can think of.
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