[Elecraft] K3 Digital Voice Mode - our future?

[Robert Nobis]

I suspect nearly all commercially manufactured equipment for the ham radio market has some patents associated with the design and technology.


Bob Nobis - N7RJN
n7rjn at nobis.net


> On Sep 18, 2015, at 09:29, Greg Troxel <gdt at lexort.com> wrote:
> 
> (trying to be brief and return to being on-topic :-)
> 
> Robert Nobis <n7rjn at nobis.net> writes:
> 
>> To a certain extent, I agree with you. I also do not like proprietary
>> technologies. However, if you look at the history of ham radio, many
>> of the products and technologies we use today started out as
>> “proprietary” technologies. Also, much of the history of ham radio is
>> based on experimenting and trying new technologies and techniques.
> 
> There's a big difference between an implementation that has a patent and
> a protocol that has an essential patent such that you may not legally
> implement the protocol without a patent license.  The problem with all
> digital voice modes except FreeDV is the patented and undocumented AMBE
> codec.
> 
>> At least one of these digital technologies, DMR, is no longer really
>> proprietary. There are at least 20 manufacturers of DMR radios,
>> worldwide.  True, DMR was not originally developed for use by hams,
>> but it clearly is a product technology that many hams are now using on
>> the VHF and UHF bands, even though I doubt we will ever see DMR on the
>> HF bands.
> 
> DMR uses AMBE, so it's proprietary, because you (apparently; law is
> hard) can't build and sell a DMR radio without a patent license.  An
> individual ham may not legally homebrew and use a DMR radio without a
> patent license.  One can't distribute Free Software that implements DMR
> on software radio.  There are many vendors, and they seem to mostly
> interoperate.  DMR is much like D-STAR, in that the container protocol
> is open or mostly open, but the codec is not.  This leads to big
> manufacturers paying patent licenses and individuals buying
> pre-programmed DSP chips to run the secret code that could have been run
> in their regular computer, if not for the patent (e.g., the "DV
> Dongle").
> 
> If Elecraft wanted to put D-STAR or DMR into the K3/KX3, besides the
> work, they would have to get a patent license for the codec.  That seems
> unlikely - and it would make me unhappy to be indirectly paying for
> something that I think doesn't belong in ham radio (well said, Don) and
> should not be permitted by the rules.
> 
> On the other hand, I suspect that implementing D-STAR with codec2 (VHF),
> or FreeDV, would just be implementation work, with no licenses and no
> extra hardware.  It doesn't seem like there's critical mass yet for that
> to make sense, though.
> 
> 73 de n1dam
>