New Packet Radio (NPR) - Access my NPR Demo site via the 70cms Band

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If you hold an Amateur Radio license you can access my dedicated Amateur Radio website via a 470Kbps New Packet Radio (NPR) data link on 70cms. Via this link you can see technical information about NPR, chat in real-time with me and other Radio Hams, run speed tests and check out my future plans for the NPR link - all transmitted and received via 70cms

Introduction

New Packet Radio first emerged in 2019. Designed by F4HDK, the original hardware operates on 70cms and offers configurable speeds of between 100 Kbps and 500 Kbps, with the hardware capable of up to 1 Mbps.

NPR represents a midpoint between the low bandwidth lower speed AX:25 (per TAPR spec) based protocols typically used on VHF and UHF, and the high bandwidth high speed options available should users have the luxury of line-of-sight access at Ghz frequencies.

This opens up RF data communications and networking not currently possible on VHF and UHF, offering higher speed over reasonable distances at an affordable cost.

Implementing TCP/IP via Open Source firmware, NPR is Interoperable with existing TCP/IP based deployments in use across Hamnet, and in providing backbone links between AX:25 nodes running, for example, Xrouter or BPQ.

To date NPR has been deployed to 100s of users globally as part of user and emergency networks. In 2020, a 2m POC version was developed and piloted on 146Mhz in the UK.

NPR has immediate use cases for:

• Local ‘last leg’ user access
• Backbone links between nodes currently using the Internet (when attached to the same NPR Master)
• Emergency communications, e.g. AREDN
• Increased service possibilities from the increased speeds, e.g. video, voice, intranet services, rich messaging

Key Features

In short and by no means conclusive, the key features of NPR are:

• NPR uses TCP/IP over TDMA: Allowing seemless interconnectivity with today's communication standards, NPR uses TCP/IP. Traffic to/from this demo site is routed directly from internet traffic using standard TCP/IP routing.
• Variable speeds / bandwidth requirements: NPR can achieve a usable data rate of 68kbps over 100Khz bandwidth and up to 470kbps over 1Mhz bandwidth
• Kit Based: Build your own or buy a kit - checkout the NPR and NPR-H Hackaday pages for the latest links

The Original F4HDK NPR Module

Briefly described, NPR has four key parts (from L-R):

Find Out More

The authority on everything NPR can be found on NPR Hackaday.io page, which provides explanatory videos, images, documentation, kits, software and a user forum. You can also interact with the creator F4HDK and other adopters and interested parties.

Localino and NPR-H

A further evolution of the NPR hardware was developed by Steffen, DO5DSH, and Localino. NPR-H (aka Version 2.0) was launched in 2021 – delivering upgraded hardware, improved RX, up to 7W output, Power over Ethernet, an LNA and Improved onboard processor

To date, NPR-H has supplied ~150 units across Europe, the US and Canada while there are a total of ~1300 units in the field since 2019.