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Motorola Trunking Systems Information
Last Updated: 01/23/2001
Motorola System ID's
Types of Motorola Trunking 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. |
| Type IIi Hybrid Systems | Motorola Type IIi Hybrid is a system that is a mixture of a Type I and Type II system. The system contains both talkgroups and Fleets/Subfleets. The common reason that an agency sets up a Type IIi Hybrid system is because they are converting from a Type I system to a Type II system, and they need to maintain compatibility with older Type I radios. |
Flavors of Motorola Trunking Systems
| Type I (Privacy Plus) | The term Privacy Plus refers to a Type I system. Privacy Plus system were 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
|
| 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 charateristics of a Motorola SmartZone system:
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.
Type II Talkgroup Conversions
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
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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-select |
| ID+6 | |
| 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-select |
| ID+14 | |
| 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've have those talkgroups programmed. Some folks have developed special tricks for monitoring all of these communications on one talkgroup. See the following link for further information: A Special Trick for monitoring all of these special functions as 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 |
Misc information on Motorola Systems