Definition of Terms Associated with D-Star

Air Link: The portion of data transmission that takes place as a radio signal. The D-STAR air link includes both modulation methods and data packet construction.

Area: The geographical region served by one D-STAR repeater.

Authorization: Adding a user to the D-STAR registry.

Bridge: A connection between just two devices, such as between two ID-1 transceivers.

Client: A program that requests data (programs, Web pages, documents, etc.) from servers.

Codec: Code/Decode, a circuit or program that translates an analog signal to and from digital form, usually refers to an audio signal, such as voice or music. Different codecs, such as AMBE or MP3, have different rules for the translation between analog and digital.

Controller: The part of a D-STAR repeater that handles and routes the voice and data streams either between modules or between modules and the gateway.

DD (Digital Data): The D-STAR high-speed digital data signal.

DV (Digital Voice): The D-STAR digital voice + low-speed data signal.

DV Dongle: The DV Dongle allows licensed Radio Amateurs to communicate over the D-Star network without the need to have a D-Star radio by using a PC or Apple Mac via a USB port, and provides encoding and decoding of compressed audio using the DVSI AMBE2000 full duplex vocoder DSP chip.  

EchoLink^®: (www.echolink.org/) and IRLP (Internet Relay Linking Project - www.irlp.net/ systems that allow repeaters to share digitized voice signals using Voice-Over-Internet Protocol (VOIP) technology.

Encapsulate: To incorporate data packets from one protocol inside the data packets of another.

Ethernet: The set of protocols that control local area network (LAN) connections, described by the IEEE 802.3 standard.

FEC: Forward Error Correction, the process of adding information to data so that the receiver can correct errors caused by the transmission process.

Gateway: The part of a D-STAR repeater that connects the controller to other gateways via the Internet.

IP: Internet Protocol, the protocol that controls how data packets are exchanged on the Internet.

IMBE: (Improved Multi Band Excitation) is a proprietary vocoder developed by Digital Voice Systems, Inc. (DVSI).

Module: A D-STAR module is the part of a D-STAR repeater that implements voice or data communication over the air.

Reflector: A D-Star reflector is a server connected to the D-Star network  that allows unlimited multiple node (repeaters) to be linked together at the same time. The bandwidth requirement for a reflector is directly related to the number of simultaneously connected nodes.

Register: Capture the call sign of a received signal and post it to the system registry for other D-STAR repeaters to use for the purposes of routing calls.

Registry: A shared data base of authorized user call signs and gateways.

Route: To direct data packets to specific destinations.

Server: A computer that supplies data (programs, Web pages, documents, etc.) to clients when requested.

vocoder: (name derived from voice encoder, formerly also called voder) is a speech analyzer and synthesizer. It was originally developed as a speech coder for telecommunications applications in the 1930s, the idea being to code speech for transmission. Its primary use in this fashion is for secure radio communication, where voice has to be digitized, encrypted and then transmitted on a narrow, voice-bandwidth channel. The vocoder has also been used extensively as an electronic musical instrument.

Zone: A group of D-STAR repeaters linked together and connected to other D-STAR systems by a single gateway.