Band plans revised for digital

September 21, 2007 by Arvadmin

The WIA's National Technical Advisory Committee (NTAC) has altered the 2m, 70cm and 23cm bands plans to accommodate narrow band digital technologies, such as D-Star.

Digital repeaters on the 2m band will be assigned frequencies in the 146 to 147MHz segment, inter-leaved between the existing FM repeater channels.

This option will increase spectrum efficiency, making up for the shortage of available channels in some parts of Australia and while allowing uniform arrangements across the country.

To separate digital and FM analogue emissions, NTAC has recommended the 145MHz segment as the best area for simplex digital, with 145.125MHz as the national simplex digital channel.

On 70cms, it has recommended that the first 15 repeater channels, that is, 438.025 to 438.375MHz, be used for D-Star type activity.

NTAC has recommended that digital activity on 70cm be centred on a national channel of 438.900 MHz, with secondary channels 12.5 KHz either side of the national channel.

For the 23cm band, repeater channels be assigned in the high end of the 1293 to 1294MHz repeater segment. On the 23cm band there is already a digital simplex segment between 1298 and 1300MHz.

As D-Star on this band uses a 128kHz emission bandwidth, it is suggested that channels are spaced at 200kHz intervals, beginning at 1298.1MHz.

These arrangements will be reviewed as D-Star and other digital activity develops.