[aprssig] APRS over D-STAR (was APRS Link)

[John Habbinga]

Here is a screenshot of UI-View32 monitoring APRS over D-STAR which is
being transmitted in Lubbock on 145.670 MHz.

http://members.cox.net/d-star/dstar-uiview.png

You might notice that it appears that UI-View32 is connected to the
Internet.  It is not.  It is connected to DStarTNC2 (127.0.0.1:14551)
which is running on my notebook computer.

The DStarInterface, or the Internet gateway, is in a tall building in
central Lubbock.  Since there is not a whole lot of APRS activity in
Lubbock I have configured the filter to pass traffic from any APRS
station located in the area served by the Lubbock office of the
National Weather Service, all of Dallas County, Texas, and all D-STAR
GPS position reports worldwide.  Postion reports from APRS digipeaters
are filtered out since there is no purpose for a D-STAR user to know
that information.

This configuration results in a transmission rate of about 1 or 2
times per minute.

So you can see that even in what is normally a congested APRS
environment, the same amount of information is passed with D-STAR with
much less bandwidth (time).  There is also the advantage that voice
communcations can take place on the same frequency with very little
chance of interference.

-- 
John Habbinga, KC5ZRQ
Lubbock, Texas
http://find-you.com/cgi-bin/find.cgi?call=KC5ZRQ-6