Updated 02/05/24 by KD2ZWN

D-Star is an Amateur Radio System which offers digital voice and data Communications. This system connects D-Star users to a world wide network using repeater sites, microwave links and the internet. D-Star operates using packet radio on the 2 m, 70 cm, and 23 cm bands. These packets contain voice and error correction data and provide better audio quality than analog audio transmissions. They also contain your callsign, and can contain your location and additional data. D-star originally only supported direct node to node connections, where a node could be anything from a repeater to a personal hotspot configured for D-star operation, but thanks to the creation of "reflectors", which allow for routing communications between multiple nodes concurrently, this limitation was largely eliminated.

Today, thanks to contributions from enthusiasts and specialists, D-star also allows for "callsign routing" which allows for 2 hams connected to D-star nodes to call each other directly using their callsign, similar to a phone call. This works by allowing nodes to report the callsigns that have linked to them to a central database so that if someone not linked to that node wants to contact an operator that is linked, the system does a search and connects them to the node that operator is recorded as being linked to. D-Star continues to be a popular system for VHF and UHF digital operations with a passionate community supporting new implementations of the technology.