I recently did a presentation on “Advanced Data Modes for Amateur Radio” (YouTube - skip to 34:00) for the San Juan County Amateur Radio Society. It was intended as a very cursory introduction of some of the things I’m covering in Zero Retries and why they’re relevant. From feedback after the presentation, I seem to have achieved that.
Here is the text from the my slides (no graphics; I’m kind of minimalist that way).
Advanced Data Modes for Amateur Radio
Presentation to San Juan County Amateur Radio Society, Friday Harbor, WA, USA
Via Zoom
SJCARS Meeting Presentation
2021-07-09, 11:30 PDT
Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Slide 2
Since I first got into Amateur Radio in 1985, it’s rare that any of my radios have a microphone attached to them. Most of my radios had TNCs attached to them. Lately, it’s a sound card / modem attached to a computer like a Raspberry Pi. I was into packet radio when I moved to the Seattle area in 1987 and almost immediately fell in with a bad crowd that did radical things like build repeaters that only passed 9600 bps data and use TCP/IP over the air. Eventually I began writing about packet radio, which somehow transitioned into a minor career writing about Broadband Internet Access using wireless technology (back when consumer access to the Internet was a new thing, and using wireless to do so was a radical concept).My other very part-time activity is being a volunteer member of the Grants Advisory Committee for Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) that I’ve previously spoken about to SJCARC. ARDC is a philanthropic organization providing grants to Amateur Radio projects large and small.I live in Bellingham, and like a few other “mainlanders” I enjoy coming up to Friday Harbor to attend the meetings and see some of my friends who now live in the San Juans.
Slide 3
There are a number of new data modes that are worth knowing about. I’ll be talking about five of the most interesting:
Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network (AREDN)
VARA FM
New Packet Radio
M17 Project
GNU Radio
Slide 4
Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network (AREDN)
- Uses firmware reload on Wi-Fi and Wireless ISP units. New capabilities of the AREDN firmware include auto-forming mesh networks and uses Amateur Radio dedicated spectrum below the 2.4 GHz band (normal Wi-Fi).
- Works similar to HamWAN, but operates on 2.3 GHz rather than 5.9 GHz and automatically forms networks if a connection to another unit can be established.
- High speed TCP/IP like a local area network - usable for video, voice, websites, email, etc. I think AREDN’s highest utility is that every ham that has a Go Kit should include an AREDN system for linking up Go Kits at the same event.
- HamWAN and AREDN networks can be (carefully...) combined, such as what’s being done in Whatcom County.
- More information: https://www.arednmesh.org
Slide 5
VARA FM
- New “software modem” mode for VHF and UHF is highly adaptive to radio conditions and can exchange data at speeds up to 25 kbps.
- Not packet radio - it’s its own system; can only interoperate with other VARA FM stations.
- Requires Windows PC, a “high fidelity” audio interface, a radio with “flat audio” input / output, and for high speed operation, a paid license from the author ($69).
- Very robust - uses Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) techniques, speeds up and slows down depending on conditions, handshakes with other stations, incorporates forward error correction. Can probably operate well over FM voice repeaters.
- More information: https://rosmodem.wordpress.com
Slide 6
New Packet Radio
- Clean sheet of paper rethinking of the radios, software and networking used in Amateur Radio Packet Radio / data communications.
- Designed by a French Amateur Radio Operator for Europe’s more liberal rules on 440-450 MHz, can do up to 500 Kbps. For US antiquated rules that specify “56 kbps maximum” it can be throttled to ~65 kbps.
- Despite the name, has nothing in common with classic packet radio (no interoperation). NPR does not use AX.25. It’s a real data radio using Ethernet and TCP/IP as its interface.
- Open source project, build the radio yourself out of parts, or order a kit of parts. Low power output, but an amplifier (intended for DMR) works reasonably well for ~20 watts output.
- More information:
https://hackaday.io/project/164092-npr-new-packet-radio and
https://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/hands-on/build-a-longdistance-data-network-using-ham-radio
Slide 7
M17 Project
- Another clean sheet of paper project to create a digital voice system similar to D-Star, DMR, Yaesu System Fusion, or APCO P25. Started by a team in Poland, but now has contributors worldwide. Entire project is open source.
- No dependencies on the proprietary DVSI codec that most systems use; the codec they will use for voice is the open source Codec 2.
- Their goal is create an entirely open source “stack” - protocols, radios, hardware, software, repeaters, etc. Will have voice, data, and messaging capability.
- Recently received a $250,000 grant from ARDC (via Open Research Institute) to speed development.
- More information: https://m17project.org
Slide 8
GNU Radio
- The ultimate method of experimentation with Software Defined Radio (SDR) is the open source software “toolkit” called GNU Radio.
- You want to experiment with Software Defined Radio? Anything you want to do is probably already available in GNU Radio. Ideal for students and experimenters.
- Hardware supported by GNU Radio ranges from $25 receive only units (RTL-SDR dongles) to very capable but expensive transceivers (Ettus Research). Several capable, (but low transmit power) transceivers available for < $500.
- For those of us who are “code challenged” there’s a training wheels add-on called GNU Radio Companion graphical user interface. Drag blocks (function modules, like FM receiver) around, draw connections (lines) between them, and “compile”. Fiddle around until it works.
- More information: https://www.gnuradio.org
Slide 9
I’ll be experimenting with all of these this coming summer from my shop in Bellingham.
If you’d like to follow along with my adventures and perspectives, I now publish a newsletter called Zero Retries. You can subscribe to it at https://zeroretries.substack.com.
I also blog at https://www.n8gnj.org (my personal Amateur Radio activities) and https://www.superpacket.org (my “big picture” perspectives on Amateur Radio).
Contact:
Steve Stroh N8GNJ
(redacted)
Questions?
Communications Academy 2021
A bit of background; through 2019, Communications Academy was a weekend event held at a community college in the Seattle area. It was a unique event that brought together first responders and emergency managers and often US government (such as Federal Emergency Management Agency - FEMA, National Weather Service - NWS, etc.) personnel and Amateur Radio operators who are, or who were, involved in Amateur Radio emergency communications. It was a good event, with ample value created just in the cross-fertilization and the education opportunities. One of the nicer bonuses of attending Comm Academy was the Saturday "show and tell" tours of various agencies' emergency communications vehicles. (The FEMA vehicles were particularly impressive.)
Communications Academy 2020 was going to be another in-person event until the outbreak of COVID-19 (which began in the US in nearby Kirkland, Washington) made that impossible. At that late date, it was impossible to put together a virtual version of Comm Academy, so it was simply canceled. Everyone understood.
Apparently, the Comm Academy principals (not listed on the website, though they were disclosed in the videos) decided not just to put on a virtual analog of in-person Comm Academy, but make Comm Academy into a virtual-first event with high quality production values and ample support for the virtual aspects, such as emcees, multiple people scanning the various live feedback channels for questions. Comm Academy's principals succeeded - Comm Academy 2021 was a stellar event, watched by thousands worldwide, instead of the few hundreds that attended the in-person version from around the Pacific Northwest and a few from outside the region.
I can't say enough good things about the production quality (and overall quality) of Comm Academy 2021 - see for yourself on YouTube.
I'll disclose that I only "attended" (watched) a few of the presentations live, mostly because weekends are precious time at home given a hectic travel schedule at the moment, and knowing that all the presentations would be archived for later viewing. I'll be watching all the presentations (except one - see below) later this week.
The two presentations I made time for were both people I knew, and presentations I've already heard in other conferences. I made time to watch these two presentations because I knew that the presenters would provide good information and they represent a realistic perspective of Amateur Radio emergency communications in 2021. I was curious how they would tailor their presentations for the Comm Academy 2021 audience, and they didn't dissapoint.
The first presentation I watched was Winlink, Digital Voice and Tech Based Comms - When Infrastructure Fails by Scott Currie NS7C. Currie discussed how much "infrastructure" has crept into Amateur Radio systems that are intended to be used for emergency communications. Currie is one of the few that explains from authority that just because you decide to put a Winlink node from your home (or other locations), if that node is dependent solely on commercial power and typical Internet access (cable modem, DSL, etc.), and does not have access to backup power and "hardened" Internet access, then it's unlikely to remain online and accessible during a widespread emergency (when Winlink will be needed most). Currie also pointed out that the extensive networking of repeaters (especially Digital Mobile Radio - DMR) repeaters is also a vulnerability. Even if the repeater is connected to Internet via a "hardened" Internet connection such as HamWAN (common here in the Pacific Northwest), the DMR controllers (C-Bridges) are installed in commercial data centers. The likelyhood of those Internet connections remaining intact are not high given the hazards here in the Pacific Northwest - tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and even cyber attacks (not to mention the remote possibility of the many military installations in the Pacific Northwest being targeted for attack.) But I digress. Currie also dived a bit deeper and pointed out that repeaters are potentially vulnerable infrastructure - they need reliable power, occasional maintenance (winters on mountaintops can be severe for tower-mounted antennas). Thus repeaters (not just the remote linking) also can fail when you need them the most.
Currie then encouraged us to get familiar with the peer-to-peer networking capabilities of Winlink - not just connecting directly between Winlink nodes, but also how to make use of the store-and-forward capabilities of Winlink. That was excellent food for thought. Setting up Winlink (as a client) is on my shack to-do list for the summer.
(Brief aside about Winlink's role in Amateur Radio and Emergency Communications. Winlink for better, or worse (by far the better, but it has some issues) has become the standard system for emergency data communications. By far it has the biggest user base, the most robust infrastructure, and the best mindshare of all the myriad methods of data communications in Amateur Radio. If you're going to participate in Amateur Radio Emergency Communications, you have to be familiar and comfortable with and able to communicate using with Winlink.)
Overall, Currie's presentation was excellent. As he admits, he's been presenting on these topics for a long time, and it shows - he's a subject matter expert on these topics. My only wish is that Currie had his own Internet presence for reference to his presentations and other materials for easier reference than parsing through his many presentations that are available online.
The second presentation I watched realtime was Emergency Wireless Internet following the Holiday Farm Fire by Randy Neals W3RWN. This presentation is remarkable and compelling precisely because it doesn't involve Amateur Radio (well, only very peripherally). In the wake of a major fire in Oregon during Fall 2020, several small central Oregon communities were left with essentially no Internet and no telephone service because their sole telecommunications connection was fiber cables on poles up a long, winding road through a forest which had experienced extensive wildfires, and the fiber cables, nor the poles, and some infrastructure (like a remote central office) did not survive. Although "cells on wheels" were quickly dispatched, they were only on site for a short time, and the communities were left with essentially no communications. Neals was part of a small band of Internet professionals that became aware of this situation and thought "maybe we can do something". They pulled off a feat of telecommunications engineering that the telecom infrastructure providers were unable... mostly unwilling... to do and knitted together microwave links and other methods to allow these communities some Internet connectivity. It's inspiring to hear about what they did.
It's sobering to know that despite these communities experiencing a "telecommunications emergency", there's nothing within conventional Amateur Radio could have done to help this situation. Voice communications via HF or VHF/UHF repeaters wouldn't have helped. Winlink wouldn't have helped. Even setting up "Amateur Radio microwave" networks like HamWAN or AREDN wouldn't have helped because of the prohibitions on commercial use and encryption on those systems. What worked was just using license-exempt wireless links and a lot of knowledge about current telecommunications systems. These are a completely different type emergency communicators. This is a "we really better pay attention to this story" moment for Amateur Radio and their perceived role in emergency communications.
It's also instructive that "Oregon Internet Response" was essentially a made-up name for this ad-hoc group. Even now they still haven't formally organized, apparently because what they did is, at the moment, a one-off that could only come together that time with those individuals. To make any progress, they had to call themselves something to get in touch with various entities. Though this is entirely my imagination, I could guess that there's a marked difference in effectiveness between:
"I'm Randy Neals and I'm a Ham Radio operator trying to help restore communications to..." <click> goes the other end.
and
"I'm Randy Neals with Oregon Internet Response and we're trying to restore communications to several communities in Oregon." "Yes, Mr. Neals, how can we help?".
In explaining the story of "Oregon Internet Response" I'm not positing that OIR did something unprecedented - it's not. There have been other groups over the years that have provided "Emergency Internet" including a group of Wireless Internet Service Providers that helped restore Internet access after Hurricane Katrina.
Neals' presentation was also excellent. What I took away from Neal's presentation is to provide useful emergency communications in 2021 and beyond, that Amateur Radio needs to radically broaden its scope of what types of communications it's prepared to help with.
A small postscript to Neal's presentation. Two members of Neals' team that previously were not Amateur Radio operators, now are. They found Amateur Radio useful enough (again, Amateur Radio was used by Neals' team, but only peripherally) to become an Amateur Radio operator.
Bookending these two great presentations was another presentation that I won't link to. This presenter was tiredly reading a laundry list of "Amateur Radio served agencies" and specifically mentioned the American Red Cross as a "served agency". Apparently he was unaware that that in October, 2020 Alex R. Dieffenbach, CEO of the American Red Cross Northwest Region, had served notice that Amateur Radio operators directly serving the American Red Cross chapters in their Northwest Region "...that HAM radio will no longer be part of our communication strategy." (That's a direct quote.) This presenter then went on to read a laundry list of various modes that are in use in Amateur Radio that could be of use for emergency communications. Included in that list were AM (Amplitude Modulation) and CW (Continuous Wave... aka Morse Code). As far as I'm concerned, that total lack of real world perspective invalidated that guy's entire presentation. If he thinks that CW has any conceivable usefulness in a real emergency...
The contrast between "unliked presenter" and the Currie and Neals presentations couldn't be more stark. The "unlinked presenter" is, from my experience, more the norm for "Amateur Radio Emergency Communications". Show up with a radio and a license and expect to be given a commensurate task. But what happens in the real world is likely to be something like:
Emergency Coordinator: "You're a ham. Could you send this spreadsheet to FEMA HQ in DC?"
Ham: "Um, I can't right now, the bands aren't right / the Winlink gateway is down / the file is too big."
Emergency Coordinator: "Sigh. OK. Well, since you're here anyway, maybe you could make some coffee?"
We gotta fix that.
Thanks for reading!
Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Bellingham, Washington, USA
2021-04-12
Posted by Steve Stroh on April 12, 2021 at 10:31 AM in Emergency Communications, Gatherings of Note, General Commentary, Growing Amateur Radio, Presentations / Talks | Permalink