Also known as: D-STAR, DSTAR

D-STAR (Digital Smart Technologies for Amateur Radio) is an amateur-radio digital voice and data standard developed by the Japan Amateur Radio League (JARL) and widely implemented by Icom. It uses GMSK modulation and an AMBE-family vocoder for its digital-voice (DV) mode.¹

D-STAR carries digital voice and data and links repeaters worldwide via internet reflectors.

Overview

D-STAR carries digital voice plus a low-rate data stream, and is known for its internet-linked reflectors and gateways that connect repeaters worldwide. DV mode fits in a narrow 6.25 kHz channel.

Technical characteristics

Property	Value
Access	FDMA
Modulation	GMSK, 4800 bps
Vocoder	AMBE (DV)
Data	Low-rate data alongside voice

History

Specified by the JARL around 2001 and brought to market by Icom; one of the earliest mainstream amateur digital-voice systems.¹

Deployment

Amateur radio worldwide, via DV repeaters, hotspots, and networked reflectors.

Decoding it with GopherTrunk

See Status for GopherTrunk’s D-STAR link-layer and voice coverage.

Sources

1. D-STAR — Wikipedia, for the JARL-developed amateur digital-voice standard, its GMSK modulation, AMBE vocoder, and reflector networking. ↩ ↩²

See also

• System Fusion (YSF)
• M17
• GMSK
• AMBE
• Vocoder

Learn it step by step

• The digital protocol landscape

From the blog

• SDR Internals, Part 10: Protocol decoders & state machines