Amateur Radio Digital Communications (aka ampr.org / 44net)

As I explained in About SuperPacket, "Big Picture of Amateur Radio" articles like this will now be in my blog SuperPacket. This article has been copied there.

Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) is a (now) confusing name for a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization whose primary mission is (now) philanthropic grantmaking. ARDC sold a portion of its 44.x.x.x Class A address space for a substantial profit, and invested the proceeds into an endowment. ARDC will continue to manage (and significantly improve) "ampr.org / 44net", which is the infrastructure involved in routing ARDC's remaining allocation of 44net addresses (44.0.0.0/9 and 44.128.0.0/10). With its endowment, ARDC can now make philanthropic grants of significant size and scope. See the list of ARDC's grants to date. 

Disclosure: I am a volunteer member of ARDC's Grants Advisory Committee (GAC). What follows is my personal perspective, and does not represent the views of ARDC.

Shortly after ARDC's announcement of its endowment and that it would begin grantmaking, I wrote the following article in 2019-08 about the potential of ARDC. I haven't published it until now. The mentions of Zero Retries refer to my newsletter which is still in development.

 

Amateur Radio Digital Corporation Creates Endowment for Angel Funding for Advanced Amateur Radio

 

(For those that aren’t familiar with venture capital terminology, the first, relatively small funding that a startup company receives, intended to be enough to prove out the company’s concept, is referred to as “Angel Funding”.) In July, 2019 (the exact date isn’t stated), a very significant development occurred for the Zero Retries Areas of Interest. I can’t summarize this development better than Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) did in their official announcement, reproduced below.

 

[I quoted a lot of background info about ARDC which is now all available on its website https://www.ampr.org. Thus I won't rehash anything already there (that was originally in my article).]

 

Wow. Just... Wow. Let’s let this sink in a bit. I for one am gobsmacked by this announcement, in a good way – I’m incredibly excited for what this will be for the future of Amateur Radio as a whole and especially the Zero Retries Areas of Interest.

 

[ARDC's late founder Brian Kantor WB6CYT] mentions in passing that they’re receiving “... a lot of vitriol, hate, and threats from small-minded hotheads.” I believe that. I’m really sorry that’s happening. If you feel as I do, considering dropping the folks at ARDC a note of encouragement and Thanks.

 

It’s my (strong) opinion that ARDC did a good thing in selling 44.192.0.0/10 and generating a pool of money for investing in Amateur Radio.. Again, they did a good thing... the right thing... and I believe they did it for the right reasons.

 

I’m excited that the ARDC board and their advisors have been “doing Internet” for a very long time. They get networking, they’ve been Amateur Radio operators for a very long time, and they can see the potential doing networking over Amateur Radio.

 

I’m also excited that the ARDC board has committed to funding “... a program of grants and scholarships that will serve to promote the art and science of digital communications including Amateur Radio” and “... apply for funding to support their projects, whether they be fundamental research, scholarships for education, design of new algorithms or technology, or the construction of Amateur facilities.” That... is... cool!!!

 

Note that ARDC is careful not to constrain themselves soley to Amateur Radio. As I’ll explore in Zero Retries, there’s an incredible amount of innovation adjacent, and relevant to Amateur Radio, that isn’t actually occurring within Amateur Radio. Just one example is the evolution of inexpensive Software Defined Receivers, epitomized by RTL-SDR.com. The creator of the unique RTL-SDR receivers certainly acknowledges innovative uses of his products with Amateur Radio... but by no means does he limit the uses of his products, or markets solely to Amateur Radio. I agree wholeheartedly with ARDC not to limit themselves to funding solely in relation to Amateur Radio.

 

Why does the emergence of an “investment fund” that understands Amateur Radio and “next generation” areas such as networking, (new) technology, facilities, etc. matter? I have a few stories to tell that are applicable.

 

Story 1: ARRL and TAPR DCC Student Paper Program

 

The first is about student paper presentations at the ARRL and TAPR Digital Communications Conference (DCC) in 1996 and 1997 (PDF). For those two years, a small grant (from the ARRL and TAPR, I think) created a program for university students to submit a paper that was relevant to “electronic communications” (I don’t think the subject was required to be about Amateur Radio, or radio communications, or even digital communications). The program was refereed. Although the DCC was not and is not an academic conference, the student paper program had the same rigor applied as for paper presentations at an academic conference. The papers were refereed by a committee of academics chaired by Greg Jones WD5IVD. The two best papers in each year were awarded a small stipend, and an all-expenses-paid trip to the DCC in 1996 and 1997. From my observations, the program was a success – there were a number of paper submissions, the four winning authors were thrilled to attend the DCC with all expenses paid, and the stipend was a nice bonus. But what was best for the students was that by formally presenting their paper at the DCC, they were able to claim credit on their CV as having presented a paper! That is a major accomplishment for a university student.

 

But, the program ran only for two years. While I don’t know exactly why the program wasn’t continued, here’s my speculation. After the first two years, Greg Jones (not yet Dr. Jones, if memory serves) couldn’t devote the time to managing the committee for a third year, and no one else stepped forward to do so. It takes a lot of time and energy manage a committee of academics to referee papers for a conference. Second, funding didn’t materialize to fund a third year of student paper presentations.

 

It might be that a small grant from ARDC might have enabled the continuation of the DCC Student Papers Program. The grant could have paid a small stipend to the academic committee to referee the submitted papers, and payment of the student’s travel expenses to the DCC to present their papers, and provide the students with a small stipend.

 

Amateur Radio needs more meaningful experiences like the DCC Student Papers Program, and it’s my hope that grants from ARDC can enable more experiences like it.

 

Story 2: ARISS Next Generation Radio Systems

 

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) is a tremendous success for Amateur Radio. Likely you’ve read the stories about the many grade school students who’ve actually talked, directly over Amateur Radio (usually, but not always) to astronaut Amateur Radio operators onboard the International Space Station (ISS). What you probably don’t know is that all of the Amateur Radio equipment onboard the ISS is not furnished by NASA or other country sponsors of the ISS. All Amateur Radio equipment on the ISS has to be furnished at no cost to NASA. That includes development of the equipment, testing, certification, training, and launch costs.

 

The original Amateur Radio equipment on the ISS, nearly since beginning operations, is old, inadequate, and in some cases, failed. The ARISS funding goal for new Amateur Radio systems is $150,000, of which only $33,000 has been raised to date.

 

ARISS is in critical need of an infrastructure update to ensure that programs like students talking to astronauts in space via amateur radio can continue. Through your donations ARISS seeks the following upgrades:
• Next Generation radio system will support easier radio mode transition, to enable new, exciting capabilities for hams, students and the general public including:

• New amateur radio communication and experimentation capabilities, including an enhanced voice repeater and updated digital packet radio (APRS) capabilities
• Slow Scan TV (picture up and downlinks) in both the US and Russian segments of ISS
• New multi-voltage power supply will support present and future radio capabilities and allow wireless experiments to be conducted

• ARISS needs to build 10 Next Generation Radio Systems to support our development, on-orbit operations, training and long-term maintenance. This includes units on-orbit (2 units--1 unit each in US and Russian segment), flight spares (2 units), training (3 units), testing (1 unit) and ground-based maintenance & troubleshooting (2 units).


All of that $150,000 is for actual expenses, not salaries, travel expenses, etc. The range of requirements for ISS hardware is astonishing, such as seamless operation on the US or Russian power systems (totally incompatible with each other), testing that failure of the systems won’t cause electrical damage, won’t outgas into the ISS atmosphere, maybe even endure vacuum conditions. $150,000 is a totally reasonable cost, especially when weighed against the vast goodwill that is generated from student contacts with the ISS.

 

And yet... they’re still $117,000 short – donations of only $33,000. I certainly don’t fault ARISS for that; I’ve met a few of the ARISS folks at Hamvention, and they’re incredibly hardworking. Time spent evangelizing for funds is time that’s not spent doing what ARISS is supposed to be about – getting the kids excited about space.

 

Thus, a grant from ARDC to ARISS to fully fund the ARISS Next Generation Radio Systems would make a huge difference to ARISS, and let them get on with the ARISS mission instead of worrying about fundraising.

 

Story 3: The Radios That Weren’t; Part 1

 

In 1997, a project was begun under the sponsorship of TAPR to build a Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) Radio that was designed specifically for use by Amateur Radio operators in the 902-928 MHz band, available to hams in ITU Region 1. This would have been the first radio specifically for Amateur Radio use that employed spread spectrum technology, and it was intended to prove that spread spectrum technology was usable and useful in Amateur Radio. If spread spectrum could work for Amateur Radio in the 902-928 MHz band (which was also a band used for Industrial, Scientific, and Medical [ISM] devices, also known as “Part 15” devices), it could work in the other Amateur Radio VHF/UHF bands.

 

In 2002, the TAPR FHSS Radio project was discontinued. The reason, in a nutshell, is that radio frequency (RF) design is hard. It’s hard enough that those who are good at RF design are always in intensive demand. Despite heroic efforts by the FHSS Radio designers, the project stretched out over several years, long enough that the key components that were in the first design were obsoleted by the manufacturer. So, the team developed a second design for the FHSS Radio using different parts. It happened again! The parts for the second design were obsoleted by the manufacturer!

 

The problem seemed to be that the development stretched out over several years because the RF development was being done on a part-time basis. If funds had been available to hire a RF engineer that could focus on the design, and complete it within a few months, the design might have been able to be manufactured (at least one or two production runs) before the parts were obsoleted. If that had happened, we might well now be using FHSS or other methods of spread spectrum on Amateur Radio spectrum.

 

Story 4: The Radios That Weren’t; Part 2

 

A more recent example was the decision by NW Digital Radio in 2018 to formally discontinue their project for a software-defined transceiver for the 440-450 MHz band that they called the UDRX-440.

 

Disclaimer: I’ve had a number of private conversations about the UDRX-440 over the past years with some of the principals of NW Digital Radio, and it’s not my intent to betray any confidences. Thus, the following description of the UDRX-440 project will be very general.

 

The genesis of the UDRX-440 was a presentation and a resulting conversation at the 2010 ARRL and TAPR DCC in Vancouver, WA. The UDRX-440 as it came to be called was proposed to be a software-defined transceiver for the Amateur Radio 440-450 MHz band. It would have a 25 watt tramisit power, and its emission and reception characteristics would be defined by software. It would incorporate a powerful embedded computer which would manage the radio functions (such as transmit / receive channel), and also provide higher level functions such as data modems, and networking. The design for the UDRX-440 was originally hoped to be a relatively quick design process around an existing RF modem chipset, but that chipset was found to have profound limitations. Like with the TAPR FHSS Radio, the design was restarted using another chipset. From this point, the story of the UDRX-440 is much the same as the FHSS Radio; there just wasn’t time, or funds, available to devote focused, full-time effort (both RF hardware and supporting software) into getting the project completed in a reasonable amount of time to push a design into production.

 

I feel that the UDRX-440 would have been a profound step change in Amateur Radio, likely a larger impact to Amateur Radio than the emergence of the TAPR TNC-2 in 1985. Like the TAPR FHSS Radio, it would have enabled experimentation with spread spectrum techniques (FHSS at a minimum) in the popular 440-450 MHz band. If the UDRX-440 had become a product, it would likely have been followed by versions for the 222-225 MHz band, and likely the 144-148 MHz band. The UDRX’s 25 watts provided ample power to form up store-and-forward mesh networks between widely separated Amateur Radio stations to jointly experiment. It would have been able to operate at larger channel sizes such as 100 kHz, adequate to support 56 kbps and faster speeds. It would have enabled more advanced data modes such as incorporating Forward Error Correction (FEC), and much, much more. It was originally going to incorporate a proprietary single board computer running Linux, but with the overwhelming popularity of the Raspberry Pi series of computers use in Amateur Radio, the UDRX-440 was redesigned around the use of a Raspberry Pi.

 

In short, it was a very promising radio concept for us data geeks in Amateur Radio.

 

The UDRX-440 was formally discontinued in 2018. To date, there have been no announcements from NW Digital Radio about a successor to the UDRX-440.

 

Would a grant from ARDC to NW Digital Radio have made a difference in the development of the UDRX-440? And would that have been a good thing, a grant from a 501(c)(3) organization to a for-profit company? Yes, I think it would have made a difference and likely would have resulted in the UDRX-440 becoming a product. ARDC funding could have enabled the hiring of full time, focused RF design as well as hiring of full time, focused software. Consider that NW Digital Radio has demonstrated some history of contributing to open source, so if ARDC made that a requirement of a grant from them (with reasonable provisions for NW Digital Radio to make a profit, say a year of exclusivity before releasing the designs and software as open source), the Amateur Radio would have benefited from a released product and a “template” for other innovative designs based on the open source template of the UDRX-440.

 

Those are just four stories of how much difference “enlightened” investment on Amateur Radio projects could make. I am very much looking forward to what ARDC does with its “Angel Fund for Advanced Amateur Radio”.

 

I'm pleased that ARDC did fund Student Paper presentations at the TAPR DCC, and ARDC also helped fund the new radio system for the International Space Station. (I did suggest that they do so in private emails to some ARDC board members.)

 

In 2021, ARDC is going to be pretty busy.

 

ARDC released its 2020 Annual Report - https://www.ampr.org/wp-content/uploads/2020-ardc-annual-report-sm.pdf.

 

ARDC has rounded out its Grants Advisory Committee (GAC) and Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), as well as adding two board members - https://www.ampr.org/about/who-we-are/.

 

ARDC is now accepting applications for a Grants Manager - https://www.ampr.org/ardc-is-hiring-a-grants-manager/.

 

ARDC is now soliciting grant proposals - https://www.ampr.org/general-request-for-proposals-rfp-march-2020/

 

Lastly, ARDC's incredibly hard-working Executive Director is Rosy Wolfe KJ7RYV. If you appreciate what ARDC is doing, as I do, consider dropping her an email note with your thoughts.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Steve N8GNJ

Bellingham, Washington, USA