Types of Motorola Trunking Systems

 

Types of Systems:

Type I Systems Motorola Type I Systems refer to the original Motorola systems that were based on Fleets and Subfleets.  Each system had a certain number of Fleets assigned, and then each Fleet had a certain number of Subfleets and radio ids.   The distribution of Fleets and Subfleets on a Type I system is determined by the system Fleetmap.   Motorola Type I systems are not scalable because they limit the amount of IDs any fleet or subfleet can support.
Type II Systems Motorola Type II systems refer to the the second generation Motorola Trunking systems that replaced Fleets and Subfleets with the concept of talkgroups and individual radio IDs.  There are no dependencies on Fleetmaps, therefore there are no limitations to how many radio ids that can participate on a talkgroup.  This allows for greater flexibility for the agency.
Hybrid Systems A Motorola Hybrid system has "blocks" of the system that are Type I Fleets/Subfleets and Type II talkgroups.  All radios may be Type II, or the Type I radios might be used exclusively in subfleets while the Type IIs are used exclusively in talkgroups.
Type IIi Systems Motorola Type IIi Hybrid is a system that has Type I fleets and subfleets, and has Type II radios that are able to use those Type I fleet/subfleets. The common reason that an agency sets up a Type IIi Hybrid system is because they have newer Type II radios that they want to interoperate with older Type I radios, without having to create new Type II talkgroups
Type IIi Hybrid Systems A mixture of Hybrid and IIi

 

Flavors of Motorola Trunking Systems:

Type I (Privacy Plus) The term Privacy Plus refers to a Type I system.   Privacy Plus systems are normally older Public Safety systems and SMRs (Specialized Mobile Radio - Businesses who rent out space on trunking systems)
Type II (Smartnet ) The term Smartnet refers to a set of features made available for Public Safety users.  This includes better security, emergency signaling, dynamic regrouping, remote radio monitoring, and other features.  The following is true of a Type II Smartnet system.
- Up to 28 system channels
- Up to 65535 unique radio ids
- Up to 4000 talkgroups
- APCO 16 Compliant
Smartzone Smartzone systems are Smartnet Type II systems that are networked together via Microwave or Land-line to provide multi-site wide area communications.  Radios affiliate with a particular site, and affiliate with a talkgroup which allows the radio to talk on that talkgroup to other radios on other sites.   Many large public safety and state agencies use SmartZone system for wide area communications.  The following are the characteristics of a Motorola Smartzone system:

- Up to 28 channels per site
- Up to 65535 unique radio ids
- Up to 48 Sites
- Analog and/or Digital voice
- APCO 16 Compliant

Monitoring a Smartzone system with a Trunktracker is the same process as monitoring any other Smartnet Type II system, except that you can only monitor one site at a time.   For you to monitor a specific talkgroup on a Smartzone site, someone's radio must be affiliated to that specific talkgroup.  Therefore, if you are monitoring talkgroup "POLICE-NORTH" on a site where no radios have that talkgroup affiliated, then you will not hear any communications on that talkgroup until a radio affiliates to that talkgroup
Smartzone OmniLink  Smartzone OmniLink provides a broad range of robust system features and utilizes a distributed call processing architecture which links up to four multi-site Smartzone™ systems together into one seamless network, supporting up to 192 sites.

Typical users of Smartzone OmniLink systems include organizations who have vast geographic requirements -- such as Electric and Gas Companies, and extremely Large Public Safety agencies.
Simulcast The term simulcast refers to the process of setting up multiple repeaters to transmit exactly the same communications on the same frequency.  Many agencies setup Simulcast systems to increase coverage of their single site Motorola system.  1 Site Controller....multiple transmitters.

 

Converting Talkgroups, Subfleets, Fleets, and Size Codes.

The easiest way to convert talkgroups between their various formats is by using the Windows scientific calculator.  It provides a Decimal to Hex function that works very well.

Type II talkgroup IDs come in three flavors:

Uniden Trunktracker format such as 41072.
ID Range: (0 - 65504)
Motorola 3 digit Hex variety such as A07.
ID Range: (000 - FFE)

Motorola 6 digit decimal variety such as 802567.
ID Range: (800000 - 804094)

In the following formulas, M3 represents a Motorola 3 digit Hex format
value, M6 represents a Motorola 6 digit decimal format value, and U
represents a Uniden format value.

The notation Dec_to_Hex(X) means convert X to its Hex equivalent.
The notation Hex_to_Dec(X) means convert X to its Decimal equivalent.
To convert Use this Formula
---------- -----------------

M6 to U (M6 - 800000)*16 = U
M6 to M3 Dec_to_Hex(M6 - 800000) = M3
M3 to U Hex_to_Dec(M3)*16 = U
M3 to M6 Hex_to_Dec(M3) + 800000 = M6
U to M3 Dec_to_Hex(U/16) = M3
U to M6 U/16 + 800000 = M6

Examples:

Convert the M6 format ID, 802617 to U format:
(802617 - 800000)*16 = 41872

Convert the M6 format ID, 802617 to M3 format:
Dec_to_Hex(802617 - 800000) => Dec_to_Hex(2617) = A39

Convert the M3 format ID, A39 to U format:
Hex_to_Dec(A39)*16 => 2617*16 = 41872

Convert the M3 format ID, A39 to M6 format:
Hex_to_Dec(A39) + 800000 => 2617 + 800000 = 802617

Convert the U format ID, 41872 to M3 format:
Dec_to_Hex(41872/16) => Dec_to_Hex(2617) = A39

Convert the U format ID, 41872 to M6 format:
41872/16 + 800000 = 802617

Type II Special Status Bits

Type II Smartnet systems use these status bits for special transmissions such as Emergency, Patches, DES/DVP scrambled transmissions, and Multiselects on Motorola Trunking systems.  Motorola Trunking radios directly interpret them for their special functions, thus no difference is noticed by the person with the radio.  The Trunktracker scanners however interpret these special talkgroup status bits as different talkgroups entirely.  Below is the conversion chart for these special status bits.

TTID + # Usage
ID+0 Normal Talkgroup
ID+1 All Talkgroup
ID+2 Emergency
ID+3 talkgroup patch to another
ID+4 Emergency Patch
ID+5 Emergency multi-group
ID+6 Not assigned
ID+7 Multi-select (initiated by dispatcher)
ID+8 DES Encryption talkgroup
ID+9 DES All Talkgroup
ID+10 DES Emergency
ID+11 DES Talkgroup patch
ID+12 DES Emergency Patch
ID+13 DES Emergency multi-group
ID+14 Not assigned
ID+15 Multi-select DES TG

Therefore, if a user was transmitting a multi-select call on talkgroup 1808, the trunktracker would actually receive those transmissions on 1815.  Some common uses of these status bits are as follows:

- When a user hits their emergency button, all conversations on the talkgroup revert to the Emergency status talkgroup (ID+2) until the dispatch clears the emergency status.  Therefore, if someone hit their emergency button and their radio was on talkgroup 16, all communications would switch to talkgroup 18.

- A lot of Fire and EMS departments dispatch tone-outs and alarms as Multi-select communications (ID+7).  Therefore, if your fire department dispatch talkgroup is 1616, and they do dispatch tone-outs and alarms as Multi-selects, then those communications will be on talkgroup 1623.

This can be a problem, because you will miss communications if you don't have those talkgroups programmed.  By setting the Type II block you are monitoring with a fleetmap of S-1 (Mot Size A), you'll essentially get Type I subfleets for each Type II talkgroup - encompassing all of the status bits into one subfleet.

Type I Size Codes

Motorola A B C D E F G H I J K M O Q
Trunktracker S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 S9 S10 S11 S12 S13 S14
Trunker.exe A B C D E F G H I J K L M N

Type I Size Code Parameters for Fleets / Subfleets

Motorola TT Trunker.exe Fleets Subfleets Ids
A S1 A 128 4 16
B S2 B 16 8 54
C S3 C 8 8 128
D S4 D 1 16 512
E S5 E 64 4 32
F S6 F 32 8 32
G S7 G 32 4 64
H S8 H 16 4 128
I S9 I 8 4 256
J S10 J 4 8 256
K S11 K 2 16 256
M S12 L 1 16 1024
O S13 M 1 16 2048
Q S14 N 1 16 4096


EDACS Overview

EDACS was created by General Electric and then further engineered by Ericsson. The EDACS technology has changed numerous owners and now is currently owned by M/A Com.

EDACS is a lot similar to Motorola trunking. It provides for the same features yet has different names for them. Simulcast networks work the same yet EDACS networks, which are similar to AMSS networks, are all independent of each other but still interconnected. A radio is programmed with each system independently and selects each system based on control channel quality. Rather than have a site number a system is basically assigned a simple number to differentiate it.

Motorola uses a specific bandplan or a complicated frequency defined system to assign frequencies. EDACS uses what are called Logical Channel Numbers [LCN]. Rather than assign a frequency with a specific identifier, each frequency at a site is assigned a number between 1 through 21. When a channel announcement occurs it contains only the LCN. With this in mind each radio must be programmed with which frequency corresponds to which LCN.

Digital communications is also available for EDACS systems and exists in two different formats, AEGIS and Pro Voice. AEGIS was the first format introduced and Pro Voice was the last and current format. Neither one is APCO-25 compliant unlike Motorola’s ASTRO, which is. Also, neither AEGIS nor Pro-Voice can communicate with each other.