APCO Project 25

Overview

Project 25 trunked radio systems are so named because they follow the open APCO Project 25 standard for public safety trunked radio systems. Multiple vendors make and sell Project 25 systems and compliant radios. Audio on these systems is exclusively digital using the APCO-25 Common Air Interface (CAI) standard.

Motorola's implementation of the Project 25 digital trunking standard is marketed as "ASTRO-25."

Different Types of "Project 25" Trunking/Modulation

Project 25 uses the IMBE Vocoder. IMBE stands for Improved Multi-Band Excitation, and was developed by DVSI Inc. Numerous vendors have produced Project-25 capable subscriber equipment, including Motorola, M/A COM, EF Johnson, Uniden, Racal, and others. There are conventional voice solutions as well as trunking solutions available for this digital voice solution.

Currently, there are two trunking solutions available that use the P25 IMBE vocoder:

Motorola ASTRO IMBE

This is a P25 non-compliant Motorola digital solution, and is also called the "ASTRO Digital CAI (Common Air Interface) Option". This is a proprietary trunking solution that uses the Project-25 vocoder as it's digital voice solution on top of a standard Motorola Type II Smartzone system. Some agencies using Motorola ASTRO IMBE systems include The City of Baltimore, The State of South Dakota, The Metro Washington Airports Authority, Fairfax County VA, and Sarasota County FL.

• The Motorola ASTRO IMBE solution uses the Motorola Type II 3.6 Kb Smartzone control channel.
• The Motorola ASTRO IMBE solution can allow both analog and P25 CAI digital radios to operate on the same network

Project 25 Digital Trunking

This is the Project 25 Digital trunking solution that is vendor independent and designed around the Project-25 Digital Trunking standards. The State of Michigan and the State of Colorado are two of the few systems that use this format. This is becoming a more popular trunking format for new systems.

• Project 25 Trunking uses a 9.6 Kb control channel.
• All radios on a Project-25 Digital trunking system must use digital voice - no analog trunking capability is provided.

Project 25 Future Developments

Currently available APCO P25 radio systems support Phase I standards. Phase I consists of a C4FM modulated signal that fits in a 12.5 khz wide channel or a CQPSK modulated signal that fits in a 6.25 khz channel. Motorola has established an additional de-facto standard for simulcast with a Phase I compatible variation called LSM. LSM is a CQPSK modulated 12.5 khz wide signal.

Both formats are 4800 symbols per second - where each symbol encodes two bits of data for a raw bit rate of 9600 bps. The Phase II standard is likely to be a 2-slot TDMA signal that fits inside a 12.5 khz wide channel. The exact format is still in committee but - once available - could allow existing 12.5 khz wide license holders to double call capacity by upgrading their infrastructure to Phase II.

Project 25 Trivia

Conventional P25 systems don't support CTCSS tone or DCS code for access. Instead they use what is called a NAC. This is a 12 bit code that prefixes every packet of data sent (including voice packets).

For trunking, the control channel delivers an average of 40 trunking commands per second. These commands may carry caller or callee identifying information such as a radio id or talkgroup. Talkgroups are 16 bits - allowing over 65000 talkgroups. Radio ids are 24 bits - allowing over 16 million unique radios. To support roaming, radios are associated with two additional IDs - a system ID and a WACN. The system ID is 12 bits while the WACN is 20 bits - allowing for over 4 billion unique systems. Voice channels are identified in trunking commands by a 16 bit number. These 16 bits can be broken down into two peices - a four bit identifier and a 12 bit channel number. The 4 bit identifier selects the appropriate bandplan. A bandplan is a simple algebraic formula for computing a frequency from a channel number.

Misc Information

• Project 25 Interest Groups Homepage - General information on the Project 25 User Group Homepage. Downloadable PDF's and more.
• Project 25 Overview - PDF Document with general Project 25 information.
• Project 25 Discussion List -Yahoogroups mailing list dedicated to project-25 information.
• The APCO International Web Site - This page is homepage for the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials. They are the group that defines standards for Public Safety communications in the United States
• The APCO Project 25 Homepage - Here you can find white papers and technical documents regarding the APCO-25 Digital public safety project - on the APCO International Web Site
• Users Accelerate Move To Project 25 Systems, Technology - An APCO bulletin posted on the Motorola Web site. This outlines how many large Public Safety agencies across the U.S. have chosen APCO-25 compliant digital system for Public Safety communications. Gives examples of which agencies have made the switch, and which agencies are about to.

• Motorola Encryption techniques - DVP, DES, Securenet, ASTRO, and Fascinator are all discussed here.
• IFR's homepage designed to communicate the latest information regarding APCO-25 Digital Testing technologies. Much of the information here centers around the IFR 2975 Project 25 Service Monitor. Lots of good reference information here.
• Interesting post - posted to Usenet regarding decoding APCO-25 digital signals. This was written by a college student who was developing an APCO-25 digital decoder as a class project. Although we never actually saw anything come out of this, the information posted is very useful none-the-less. Interesting Reading!
• Digital Source Coding of Speech Signals - Great information on vocoders, and the IMBE Vocoder standard developed by DVSI.
• IMBE and AMBE Speech Compression - [PDF] - Article describing the scientific theory behind the IMBE and AMBE Speech Compression Vocoders. From the Engineering Electronic Times.