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iridium-parser output format guide

⚠️ This format is continually evolving, so this documentation may not be 100% up to date.

Overview

Frame Overview

Frame Header

All (parsed) frames start with a header:

Example:

ISY: p-1472473197 000001626.1625 1621698688 100% -59.2|-116.2|21.7 179 DL
IRA: p-1713996046-e000 000001278.7213 S.06|+10954  95% -68.40|-117.34|18.59 120 DL
Field Content Example Comment
0 Frame type ISY:
1 UNIX timestamp in seconds when the recording started p-1472473197 prefix is always "p-"
2 Time in milliseconds inside the recording 000001626.1625 resolution of up to 100ns
3 Frequency in Hertz 1627088000 Estimated center frequency
4 Confidence in percent 97% Confidence is estimated during QPSK demodulation by gr-iridium
5 Signal levels -59.2|-116.2|21.7 all in dBFS
6 Length in symbols 179 Excluding the 12 symbol sync word. One symbol equals two bits
7 Direction DL DL (sent by satellite) or UL (sent by user equipment)

Notes:

  1. field 1 may contain a suffix of '-e000' where the three digits contain the number of corrected bit errors in each of the different parser stages (UW, header/LCW, payload/BCH). If more than 9 errors were corrected in any stage, the digit will still be 9.
  2. field 3 will be in the format subband.access|offset when --channelize option is used. Subband can be S for Simplex or 01-30, Access can be 1-8, or 1-12 for the simplex subband. The offset will be in Hz.
  3. Signal levels are "Signal, Noise, SNR" in that order. Signal strength is estimated by the demodulator stage of gr-iridium, while Noise floor & SNR are estimated by the burst-detector stage of gr-iridium.
  4. Confidence is calculated as count(goodsymbols)/count(symbols), where goodsymbols have a deviation of less than 22° from a valid spot in the QPSK decoder.

IRA: Ring Alert

Ring alerts are sent periodically by the satellite to every spot beam. For one satellite every 90 ms a new ring alert gets sent to another spot beam. There are 48 spot beams, so every 4.32 s a ring alert is sent to the same spot beam.

Example:

IRA: [...] sat:016 beam:37 xyz=(+1396,+0711,+0862) pos=(+28.82/+026.99) alt=797 RAI:48 ?10 bc_sb:07 P01: PAGE(tmsi:113dbaf8 msc_id:02) {OK} FILL=10
Column Content Example Comment
8 Satellite number sat:026 7 bit field, iridium internal ID
9 Spot beam number beam:28 Spot beam ID (XXX: spot beam picture)
10 Satellite or spot beam position xyz=(1006,0236,1210) coordinates in ECEF format
11 Satellite or spot beam position pos=(+46.64/-115.08) field 10 converted to lat/lon degrees
12 Satellite or spot beam altitude alt=791 In km
12 Ring alert interval RAI:48 Always 48 in the live system
13 Unknown ?10 2 bits
14 Broadcast channel sub-band bc_sb:14 Brodcast channel for the spot beam is in this sub-band
15- TMSI pages PAGE(tmsi:06f164d4 msc_id:03) {OK} OK indicates a properly terminated list of pages
Fill count FILL=10 amount of end-of-packet padding

Notes:

  1. As there can be a different amount of pages, the size of a ring alert frame is not constant.
  2. Field 11/12 is a rough conversion (geocentric latitude instead of proper geodetic latitude) check source for details

Satellite number

The satellite number is an iridium internal ID in the range of 0-127. This differs from the generally used "Object Name".

Check reassembler -m satmap on how to create a mapping between these two.

Spot beam

The spot beams positions differ between the (decomissioned) original iridium satellites and the iridium-next satellites.

A graphical representation can be created with beam-plotter.py

Location Information

The ring alert contains two different, alternating, locations:

SV Location

Locations with a high altitude (> 100 km) represent the current location of the SV (Space Vehicle).

Spot Beam Location

Locations with a low altitude (< 10 km) represent the location where the SV thinks that this particular spot beam is hitting the earth’s surface. Note that this is not the location of a subscriber.

IMS: Messaging (pager)

IMS: [...] 8:A:01 len:03/T1/F00 1 0 101011100010010000000 000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000

Column Content Example Comment
8 block:group:frame 8:A:01
9 Length len:03 length in BCH blocks (21 bits)
Trailer length T1 number of trailer blocks
Fill length F00 number of filler blocks
10 unknown 1 1 bit
11 secondary 0 1 bit
12-15 block header message

fields 11-16 are only present if group is "A"

block:group:frame

block: Block number in the super frame group: A (for Aquisition) or 0-3 frame: Current frame number

Trailer length

Packet may have up to 2 all-1 trailer blocks

secondary

unclear

block header message

a 63 bit message. Contents yet unknown

MSG:

MSG: [...] 8:0:01 len:13/T1/F00 ric:3525766 fmt:05 seq:30 1000100011 0/0 csum:0b msg:ab9e24d990f0e56d0b2c5d796358df2b7c788aed47eae66b4e1df8ab970d9cdd9c6177b56694d934b3c6cdcf8628b6a0c6e5bf8b0f. TXT: UgDMLCae6BeEkeFXoJoGD+ZGu9M4pwq+KC3MlqBwZYRMIRgFfspbEZAFroq0

This is a specialisation of an IMS message, so for the beginning see IMS

Column Content Example Comment
10 radio identification code ric:3525766
11 format fmt:05 5 for ascii, 3 for BCD
12 sequence no. seq:30 5-bit field, incrementing for messages to the same ric
13 unknown 1000100011
14 part counter 0/0 counter for multi-part messages. 0-based
15 checksum csum:0b inverted 7-bit sum
16 message msg:hex.bits represented in hex with remaining non-multiple-of-8 bits appended as string of 0/1
17- Ascii representation message converted to ascii

ric

The radio identifier code is used by the pager to filter messages intended for itself. It has no correlation with the phone number assigned to that pager.

part counter

A pager message may consist of up to three parts (0-2) that will form a complete message.

reassembly

reassembler -m msg can be used to assemble multi-part messages and print them in a more readable format.

MS3:

similar to MSG, for BCD messages. Very rare

ITL: Time & Location

ITL: [...] V2 OK[0] P4 S10 N02 1011111 1000110 0111001

ITL packets consist of a long fixed header and several PRS (pseudorandom sequences) that encode data so it can be received in adverse signal conditions.

See itl.py for a list of these PRS values.

ITL Packets contain the current time (LBFC) spread over multiple messages.

Column Content Example Comment
8 version V2
9 OK[0] 0 is the PRS category (0-3)
10 plane P4 plane that the satellite is on (1-6)
11 sat S10 satellite index (1-11) on the current plane
12 message type M03
13-15 data 1011111 1000110 0111001 3 * 7 bit

Notes:

  1. Version seems to be currently 2
  2. based on the message type the sat field can be empty or contain Rxx which is a relative identifier (satno mod 3)

itlmap

reassembler.py -m itlmap will create a mapping between iridium internal satellite "id" and their position inside the constellation (plane / index)

INP: "new packet"

Work in progress.

IBC: Broadcast

IBC: [...] bc:0 sat:028 cell:32 0 slot:0 sv_blkn:0 aq_cl:1111111111111111 aq_sb:22 aq_ch:2 00 0000 tmsi_expiry:2020-06-25T14:18:30.44Z [0 Rid:119 ts:1 ul_sb:22 dl_sb:22 access:3 dtoa:001 dfoa:00 00] []
IBC: [...] bc:0 sat:028 cell:24 0 slot:0 sv_blkn:0 aq_cl:1111111111111111 aq_sb:19 aq_ch:2 00 0000 time:2022-01-04T23:00:48.89Z [] []
IBC: [...] bc:0 sat:028 cell:24 0 slot:0 sv_blkn:0 aq_cl:1111111111111111 aq_sb:19 aq_ch:2 00 101010110001111001000111110000 max_uplink_pwr:20 [] []

IBC can optionally have one of three information sets followed by channel assignments

Column Content Example Comment
8 bc:0
9 satellite id sat:028 same 7-bit-id as in IRA
10 cell id cell:32 a.k.a. spot beam number
11 unknown 0 1 bit
12 slot slot:0 1 bit
13 sv_blocking sv_blkn:0 1 bit
14 acquisition classes aq_cl:1111111111111111 bitfield
15 acquisition subband aq_sb:19
16 acquisition channel aq_ch:2
17 unknown02 00 2 bits

variant 1:

Column Example Comment
18 0000
19 tmsi_expiry:2020-06-25T14:18:30.44Z seems to be mostly constant

variant 2:

Column Example Comment
18 0000
19 time:2022-01-04T23:00:48.89Z L-Band Frame Counter, 90ms granularity

variant 3:

Column Example Comment
18 101010110001111001000111110000 unknown
19 max_uplink_pwr:20 seems to be constant

Channel Assigments

[0 Rid:119 ts:1 ul_sb:22 dl_sb:22 access:3 dtoa:001 dfoa:00 00]

The channel assignment are sent in response to IAQ requests from a mobile terminal and assign a frequency & timeslot for further communication.

Content Example Comment
type 0 0-7
random id Rid:119 matches rid from IAQ packet
timeslot ts:1 1-4
uplink subband ul_sb:22
downlink subband dl_sb:22
frequency_access access:3
delta time of arrival dtoa:+005 signed
delta frequency of arrival dfoa:00 signed
unknown 00 2 bits

Notes:

  1. Type 7 is likely used for iridium "next generation" devices and currently not understood.

IAQ: Acquisition

IAQ: [...] 1000 Rid:189 CRC:OK

IAQ packets are encoded in BPSK and are sent by mobile terminals trying to connect to the network.

Column Content Example Comment
8 1000 4 bits, first is a "final" bit
9 random id Rid:189 8 bit, chosen by MT
10 crc CRC:OK 14 bits of a 16bit crc

LCW: Link control word

The remaining frames (VOC, IU3, IDA, IIP, ISY and their subtypes) contain a Link control word at the beginning

LCW(2,T:maint,C:switch[dtoa:0,dfoa:1],000)

The contents are diverse and contain e.g. information about handovers, frequency as well as time adjustments or selective "ack" information for multi-frame messages.

VOC

Contain voice data

IU3

Not much is known

IDA

Contain LAPDm messages potentially split over multiple frames Use reassembler -m idapp to decode

IIP

Contain data transmissions (e.g. PPP or RUDICS)

ISY

Contain a constant bit pattern, used mainly to transmit info via the LCW