Specifications

MICOM-2ES/2RS/2TS ALE Supplement to Owner’s Guide

New ALE Features

This section covers the new ALE features that meet the requirements of

MIL-STD-188-141B. This includes a description of selective calling features, and

operating instructions for the various types of ALE calls. This includes new call

types, as well as call types already supported under MIL-STD-188-141A but have

been expanded under new version.

Selective Calling

MICOM 2 supports selective calling as standardized in MIL-STD-181-141B and

FED-1075, and therefore has the capability and flexibility to link with one or many

prearranged or as-needed single or multiple stations.

ALE Addressing Method

ALE uses digital addresses to identify stations. The fundamental address element in

the ALE system is the single word: one ALE address word must always contain three

characters (one triplet).

A single ALE word is needed for the basic individual station address (this is called a

basic address). To increase the available range of addresses, basic addresses can be

expanded up to a maximum of 5 words (15 characters): such addresses are called

extended addresses.

The characters that can used in addresses are a subset of the standard Basic 38 ASCII

character set. This subset includes:

• All the capital (upper case) letters (A to Z)

• All the digits (0 to 9)

• Two utility characters:

!" The stuffing symbol @. It can be used to add characters at the end of an

address, so that the resulting length is a whole number of words

(triplets). A receiving station then interprets only the non-stuffing

characters. For example, if the address has 8 characters, add one @ at the

end of the address, whereas for an address with 7 characters, two @

symbols must be added. In special addressing modes, this symbol is

interpreted as an ignore instruction: see additional utilization guidelines

in Table 1.

!" The wildcard symbol ?. It is used to indicate that any character (except

@) is acceptable (this is the equivalent of a don’t mind instruction). See

Table 2 for utilization guidelines in the special addressing modes.

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