Address Encoding

M17 uses 48 bits (6 bytes) long addresses. Callsigns (and other addresses) are encoded into these 6 bytes in the following ways:

  • An address of 0 is invalid.
  • Address values between 1 and 262143999999999 (which is \(40^9-1\)), up to 9 characters of text are encoded using base40, described below.
  • Address values between 262144000000000 (\(40^9\)) and 281474976710654 (\(2^{48}-2\)) are invalid
  • An address of 0xFFFFFFFFFFFF is a broadcast. All stations should receive and listen to this message.
Table 22 Address scheme
Address Range Category Number of addresses Remarks
0x000000000000 RESERVED 1 For future use
0x000000000001-0xee6b27ffffff Unit ID 262143999999999  
0xee6b28000000-0xfffffffffffe RESERVED 19330976710655 For future use
0xffffffffffff Broadcast 1 Valid only for destination field

Callsign Encoding: base40

9 characters from an alphabet of 40 possible characters can be encoded into 48 bits, 6 bytes. The base40 alphabet is:

  • 0: A space. Invalid characters will be replaced with this.
  • 1-26: “A” through “Z”
  • 27-36: “0” through “9”
  • 37: “-” (hyphen)
  • 38: “/” (slash)
  • 39: “.” (dot)

Encoding is little endian. That is, the right most characters in the encoded string are the most significant bits in the resulting encoding.

Example code: encode_base40()

uint64_t encode_callsign_base40(const char *callsign) {
  uint64_t encoded = 0;
  for (const char *p = (callsign + strlen(callsign) - 1); p >= callsign; p-- ) {
    encoded *= 40;
    // If speed is more important than code space,
    // you can replace this with a lookup into a 256 byte array.
    if (*p >= 'A' && *p <= 'Z') // 1-26
      encoded += *p - 'A' + 1;
    else if (*p >= '0' && *p <= '9') // 27-36
      encoded += *p - '0' + 27;
    else if (*p == '-') // 37
      encoded += 37;
    // These are just place holders. If other characters make more sense,
    // change these. Be sure to change them in the decode array below too.
    else if (*p == '/') // 38
      encoded += 38;
    else if (*p == '.') // 39
      encoded += 39;
    else
      // Invalid character or space, represented by 0, decoded as a space.
      //encoded += 0;
  }
  return encoded;
}

Example code: decode_base40()

char *decode_callsign_base40(uint64_t encoded, char *callsign) {
  if (encoded >= 262144000000000) { // 40^9
    *callsign = 0;
    return callsign;
  }
  char *p = callsign;
  for (; encoded > 0; p++) {
    *p = " ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789-/."[encoded % 40];
    encoded /= 40;
  }
  *p = 0;

  return callsign;
}

Why base40?

The longest commonly assigned callsign from the FCC is 6 characters. The minimum alphabet of A-Z, 0-9, and a “done” character mean the most compact encoding of an American callsign could be: \(log2(37^6)=31.26\) bits, or 4 bytes.

Some countries use longer callsigns, and the US sometimes issues longer special event callsigns. Also, we want to extend our callsigns (see below). So we want more than 6 characters. How many bits do we need to represent more characters:

Table 23 bits per characters
characters bits bytes
7 \(log2(37^7)=36.47\) 5
8 \(log2(37^8)=41.67\) 6
9 \(log2(37^9)=46.89\) 6
10 \(log2(37^{10})=52.09\) 7

Of these, 9 characters into 6 bytes seems the sweet spot. Given 9 characters, how large can we make the alphabet without using more than 6 bytes?

Table 24 alphabet size vs bytes
alphabet size bits bytes
37 \(log2(37^9)=46.89\) 6
38 \(log2(38^9)=47.23\) 6
39 \(log2(39^9)=47.57\) 6
40 \(log2(40^9)=47.90\) 6
41 \(log2(41^9)=48.22\) 7

Given this, 9 characters from an alphabet of 40 possible characters, makes maximal use of 6 bytes.

Callsign Formats

Government issued callsigns should be able to encode directly with no changes.

Multiple Stations

To allow for multiple stations by the same operator, we borrow the use of the ‘-’ character from AX.25 and the SSID field. A callsign such as “AB1CD-1” is considered a different station than “AB1CD-2” or even “AB1CD”, but it is understood that these all belong to the same operator, “AB1CD”

Temporary Modifiers

Similarly, suffixes are often added to callsign to indicate temporary changes of status, such as “AB1CD/M” for a mobile station, or “AB1CD/AE” to signify that I have Amateur Extra operating privileges even though the FCC database may not yet be updated. So the ‘/’ is included in the base40 alphabet. The difference between ‘-’ and ‘/’ is that ‘-’ are considered different stations, but ‘/’ are NOT. They are considered to be a temporary modification to the same station.

Interoperability

It may be desirable to bridge information between M17 and other networks. The 9 character base40 encoding allows for this:

DMR

DMR unfortunately doesn’t have a guaranteed single name space. Individual IDs are reasonably well recognized to be managed by https://www.radioid.net/database/search#! but Talk Groups are much less well managed. Talk Group XYZ on Brandmeister may be (and often is) different than Talk Group XYZ on a private cBridge system.

  • DMR IDs are encoded as: D<number> eg: D3106728 for KR6ZY
  • DMR Talk Groups are encoded by their network. Currently, the following networks are defined:
  • Brandmeister: BM<number> eg: BM31075
  • DMRPlus: DP<number> eg: DP262
  • More networks to be defined here.

D-Star

D-Star reflectors have well defined names: REFxxxY which are encoded directly into base40.