Pocsag Mobilecomm
Pocsag Mobilecomm
Pocsag Mobilecomm
Overview
The POCSAG name comes from the UK, and
stands for: Post Office Code Standardization
Advisory Group which at one time controlled all
radio data telecommunications in Britain. POCSAG is a
transmission protocol used to transmit one-way messages to "pagers'.
are radio small receivers that are
activated when a properly message encoded is Pagers
transmitted them over aradio channel.
to
The POCSAG protocol was a major
improvementover previous tone-based paging
protocols, allowing for much longer pager
system. battery life and many more subscribers per
There are three standard POCSAG data rates: 512, 1200, or
longest communication range, while 1200 and 2400 allow for 2400 bps. 512bps has the
per second.
more pages to be transmitted
POCSAGpages are transmitted in a batch structure, with a long
of the message to allowpagers to periodically pre-amble at the beginning
asynchronously
page. Once they detect the preamble, they sync-up to the wake up, and listen for a
the embedded synch bits. Pagers analyze PCSAG message by detecting
sequential batches
contains an address code word frame with its own cap code. of pages to see if any batch
Modulation
The typical over-the-air modulation used is RF
Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) with a
t4500Hz shift on the RF carrier. The high frequency
represents adigital 0and the low
frequency a digital 1. Often single transmission channels
than one of the rates. contain blocks of data at more
CAP Codes
"CapCode" stands for Channel Access
Protocol code, which is the unique ID code
to a particular pager. assigned
When a pager detects its own cap code within a
user with abeep, tone, or vibration. And if it POCSAG address frame. it will alert the
has display
a text message it it is ancapability, will display a number
if it is a numeric pager, or it
display
cap codes are 21 bits long, allowing for up
The cap code is comprised of 18 to 2097152 unique alpha-numeric pager.
cap codes per radioPOCSAG
address bitsand 3 frame location bits. The frame channel.
location
bits are the least-significant bits, and the address bits are the most-significant bits of the cap
code.
The Preamble
The preamble consists of 576 bits of alternating 1-0 bits transmitted. To save power, most
paging receivers and pagers put themselves to sleep, drawing very little power, and
periodically wake-upto listen on the radio channel for a POCSAG preamble.
When a receiver detects the presence of preamble, to stays awake, and synchronizes its
receiver to the bit-rate of the preamble. The alternating 1-0 pattern of the preamble identifies
the data-rate of the upcoming paging batches. Allbatches after the preamble are sent at the
same data rate of either 512, 1200, or 2400 bits per second.
POCSAG Batches
APOCSAG starts with aframe synchronizationcode (FSC)followed by 8frames. Each of
the 8 frames has two code words in it. Up to 16 address code words may be sent per batch.
For proper batch structure, each frame has two address code words,two idle code words, or
two message code words.
Code Words
01111100110100100001010111011000
Within a batch, there are two types of code words; an
code word. Each contains 32 bits of address code word and a message
information.
Address Code Word Format
2 thru 19 20 21 22 thru 31 32
BCH Check P
1 Message Bits Bits
Amessage code word always starts with a 1in bit 1and always follows directly after the
address. Each message code word replaces an address code word in the batch.
ldle Code Word Structure
The idle code word is a reserved code word used to fill a frame that does not have either a
message code word or an address code word. If a frame contains only an address, such as
when a tone-only pager is alerted, an idle code word completes the 64-bit frame. The idle
code word comprises the 32 hex value of Ox7A89C197:
01111010100010011100000110010111
Numeric Messages
bits 30-11
BCD numeric encoding packs 4 bit BCD symbols 5 to a message code word into
significant) of a BCD
The most significant nibble (bits 30,29,28,27) is the leftmost (or most
coded message.
encoded as follows:
Values beyond 9 in each nibble (i.e. OxA through 0xF) are
OxA Reserved (possibly used for address extension)
OxB Character U (urgency)
OxC" Space (blank)
OxD "", Hyphen (or dash)
OxE ")", Left bracket
OxF "", Right bracket
the code word.
BCD messages are space padded with trailing 0xC's to fill
as shown in this
POCSAGreceivers output ASCIlcharacters representing the numeric digits
table:
Numeric ASCII ASCII Numeric ASCII ASCII
Code Digit Code
Digit
Ox0 Ox30 Ox8 8 0x38
Alphanumeric Messages
Alphanumeric messages are comprised of a sequence of numbers and letters,using 7-bit
ASCIlcharacters. Characters are encoded in 7 bit ASCIlformat and assembled into the 20
bit message bits area of amessage code word (bits 30-11). Three seven bit ASCII
characters use 21 bits so if the message is 3 or more ASICC characters long, the first 20
bits of an ASCIl message are in the first code word, the next 20 bits of a alphanumeric
message are transmitted in the next code word, and so on. ASCIlcharacters are placed
from left to right (MSB to LSB). The LSb of an ASCIl character is transmitted first.
The 7-bit ASCIlcode is used for alpha-numeric messages. There are 20 bits in each
codeword for message data, however, in this format each character is 7 bits. Characters are
split between codewords and the last codeword is filled with
as end of message,end of text, or null. Null is the only unprintable characters such
character which can be incomplete.
message is 40 characters. However,.
The maximum length for a standard alpha-numericallow up to 80 characters.
there are provisions for longer messages which
1 1
1 1
1
ASCII 1 1
1
b4 b3 b2 b1
NUL DLE SP
SOH DC 1 A
1
STX DC 2 B R
1
ETX DC # 3
1
EOT DC
1 ENQ NAK % 5
1 f
ACK SYN & 6 F
1
1 BEL ETB 7 G
1
BS CAN 8 H X
1
1 1 HT EM
LF SUB J
1
VT ESC K k
1 1
FF FS L
1 1
1 1 CR GS M m
1
1 1 SO RS
1 1 SI US DEL