Sandeep Baruah, Scientist-E Vigyan Prasar Department of Science & Technology C-24, Qutab Institutional Area New Delhi-110 016 E-mail: [email protected] CONTENT Part-I: Introduction to ham radio PAGE A. What is Ham Radio? 1 B. Why an Amateur Radio Operator is called a ham? 2 C. What is the minimum qualification to become a ham? 3 D. What is an amateur radio call-sign? 3 Part-II: Amateur Radio Rules & Regulation A. Detailed procedures related to application for a ham radio licence. 4 B. Different grades of licencing examinations and licences. 5 C. The Indian Wireless Telegraphs (Amateur Service) Rules, 1978. 6 D. Syllabus of Amateur Station Operator's Certificate (ASOC) Examination. 28 E. Question and answer section on amateur radio rules & regulations 33 F. Radio telephony operating procedure. 41 G. Radio telegraphy operating procedure. 43 Part-III: Radio Theory and Practice A. Elementary theory of electricity & magnetism 47 B. Thermionic emission & valves 77 C. Semiconductor devices 80 D. Radio receivers 86 E. Transmitter 97 F. Radio wave propagation 103 G. Aerials 109 Part-IV: Learning the International Morse Code. 117 Part-V: Safety measures in a ham radio shack. 121 Annexure-I: List of Wireless Monitoring Stations Annexure-II: Call-sign Prefixes of Amateur Radio Stations of different countries allotted by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Annexure-III: Sample Question Papers for the Amateur Radio Licencing Examination TIFAC-IDRiM Conference 28th –30th October 2015 New Delhi, India RADIO BASED APPROACH FOR DISASTER RISK REDUCTION AND MANAGEMENT USING AUTOMATIC PACKET REPORTING SYSTEM (APRS®) AND HAM RADIO (AMATEUR RADIO) DIGITAL COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES S. BARUAH Vigyan Prasar, Department of Science & Technology C-24, Qutab Institutional Area New Delhi 110 016 [email protected] ABSTRACT In the event of any large scale disaster, due to the breakdown of conventional modes of communication (mobile phone, land line phone, Internet etc.) disaster management becomes a difficult task for various governmental and non-governmental emergency responders. So it is of utmost importance to keep in place an alternative communication service up and running which can work as a second line of communication utilizing radio waves. During many of the past large scale disasters all over the world, Amateur Radio Service (ham radio) proved its efficacy in quick dissemination of disaster management information (search and rescue, relief work, tracking of missing person, real-time plotting of vehicles and personnel involved in disaster management, transmission of weather telemetry data etc.). Amateur Radio Service is a non-commercial licensed service utilized by voluntary radio experimenters and radio enthusiasts regulated by the telecommunication authority. Automatic Packet Reporting System -- APRS® (Registered Trademark of Bob Bruninga, US Naval Academy) is a digital radio communication technology which augments the scope of application of Geographical Information System (GIS) for disaster management. Vigyan Prasar is involved in coordination of disaster management activities during many of the past large scale disasters gaining expertise in digital technologies for disaster risk reduction and management through its state- of-the-art radio communication system. 1. INTRODUCTION Most of the disasters are unpredictable and in a country as big as India with population exceeding 120 crore, it creates havoc in terms of loss of human life and other valuable property. Governmental agencies and NGOs employ different means to predict location, route and extent of disaster with a probable time frame. Due to the lack of adequate low-cost radio technology infrastructure in our country, the emergency responders are facing problems in disaster risk reduction works, pre-disaster communication in disaster prone areas and post- disaster management. The author being a licensed amateur radio experimenter (ham radio hobbyist) with the government allotted call-sign VU2MUE (Baruah, 1999a) for the last twenty five years (licensed in 1989) was involved in emergency disaster communication during many of the large scale disasters (Arya, A.S., et. al. 2005 and 2006) that our country has gone through. A study was done by Baruah in 2004a on Ham Radio for Disaster Communication. The role of ham radio operators in India during the Tsunami disaster in 2004 was documented in details by Baruah, 2004b. Baruah, 2012 discussed in detail about live RF data on an interactive Internet map. It is realized that without the integration of GIS Technology and Amateur Radio Digital Communication Technology at grass root level Emergency Operation Centres (EOCs), it would remain a far flung dream for the government to come out with a mechanism that would not only ensure an effective linkage between the people living is disaster prone areas with that of those who are involved in disaster management. A countrywide Amateur Radio emergency digital communication network can be established under the Indian Wireless Telegraph Amateur Service Rules of the Department of Telecommunications (Baruah, 1999b). 2. MATERIALS AND METHOD 2.1 GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM (GIS) AND PACKET RADIO Geographical Information System (GIS) broadly describes any information system that integrates, stores, edits, analyses, shares and displays geographic information (called the geospatial data) for decision making in an interactive map. For government licensed amateur radio experimenters (most of whom might not have the professional knowledge of GIS) to use their two-way radio communication equipment for automatic transmission of GIS data/information, Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) is the most suitable mode. APRS (Bruninga, 2002) is evolved from its predecessor ham radio communication technology called Packet Radio (Ackermann, 2002) which is a digital mode of Amateur Radio (Ham Radio) communications which corresponds to computer telecommunications. The telephone modem is replaced by a "magic" box called a terminal node controller (TNC); the telephone is replaced by an amateur radio transceiver (a combined unit of radio transmitter and receiver), and the phone system is replaced by the "free" amateur radio waves. Packet radio takes any data stream sent from a computer and sends that via radio to another amateur radio station similarly equipped. Packet radio is so named because it sends the data in small bursts, or packets (Kenney, 1995). Interfacing of the computer through its serial communication port (RS232) to the two-way radios is done through suitable radio modems. In the absence of RS232 serial ports, serial to USB adaptor cables are utilized by radio experimenters which provide 1200 baud and 9600 baud data transmission speed in the government allotted Very High Frequency amateur band (VHF: 144-146 MHz) and Ultra High Frequency (UHF: 434 to 438 MHz) amateur bands. 9600 baud is approximately 960 unencrypted digitally transmitted characters in one second. Though amateur radio experimenters have been utilizing the AX.25 Packet Radio protocol (Beech et.al, 1998) since late 70s for transmission of texts (transfer of text files from one computer to another computer using radio waves), data, binary file transfer over the radio and for two way interactive digital communication (text chat as well as Bulletin Board System for file/mail storage and retrieval) using walkie-talkies interfaced to the computer, in the recent time Automatic Packet Radio System (APRS®) is gaining popularity as it provides all the information graphically on a map that is of immense utility in disaster management. Graphical representation (through standardized icons) of various geospatial information (e.g. Earthquake, cyclone, relief camp, Emergency Operation Centre-EOC, ambulances, hospitals, different type of vehicles etc. (Figure 1, 2 and 3) make all emergency management related information available to the emergency responders just at the click of the mouse button. Open source and free computer software like UI-VIEW (Barker, 2004) and APRSIS32 (Deffenbough, 2009) are available on the internet for different operating system which can be utilized at the Emergency Operation Centres (EOCs) for transmission and monitoring of geospatial information on maps using radio. IGate (Bruninga, 2015) is a radio to internet gateway system utilized by ham radio operators to feed radio frequency data to internet and make these available all over the world. 2.2 PACKET RADIO STATION For APRS® to be utilized for disaster risk reduction and disaster management, the basic packet radio station consist of a Very High Frequency (VHF) two-way radio interfaced to the computer through a TNC (Terminal Node Controller) and a software application for digital communication (Figure 1) The two way radio is connected to an external antenna for transmission and reception of digital data. The function of the TNC is to encode and decode the data. The software, also sometime called a terminal programme displays the data in human readable format. The GUI (Graphical User Interface) software also allows the user to connect to a station, sending text message as well as transfer of files from his/her computer to the other connected computer (connected through radio waves). Packet is communications between people either director indirect. Emergency responders can work keyboard to keyboard or use electronic mailboxes to leave messages. Due to error checking by the TNC, all of it is error free, too. As the data is received it is continuously