Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) has awarded a $420,000 grant, one of the first for 2023, to develop and document FreeDV, an open-source amateur radio technology. The grant will be used to help advance the state of the art in HF digital voice and promote its use.
FreeDV is a graphical user interface application for Windows, Linux, and macOS that allows any SSB radio to be used for low-bit-rate digital voice. Speech is compressed down to 1600 bits/second, then modulated onto a 1.25 kHz wide 16 QPSK signal, which is sent to the microphone input of an SSB radio. The technology was initially developed by David Rowe, VK5DGR. Now, an international team of radio amateurs are working together on the project.
Among the many opportunities for FreeDV, the ARDC grant will also allow:
Experienced digital signal processing developers to work with the volunteer staff to improve speech quality and low signal-to-noise ratio operation, making FreeDV performance superior to SSB over poor HF channels.
Commercial HF radio companies to embed FreeDV into at least two commercial radios, greatly reducing set up effort and latency.
Widespread adoption of a truly open-source, next-generation digital voice system for HF radio.
A mature, open-source low-bit-rate codec that's useful for a variety of amateur radio and commercial applications.
A suite of high-performance, HF data modems for open-source data applications, usable by any radio amateur.
To learn more about the technical specifications of FreeDV, go to https://www.freedv.org.
ARDC https://www.ampr.org/ is a California-based foundation with roots in amateur radio and the technology of internet communication.
Source:
The ARRL Letter