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datalink

datalink is an open-source receiver and decoder for aviation datalink traffic: the messages aircraft exchange with airline systems, air traffic service units, and ground-station networks.

Start here

If you are new to ACARS, VDL2, HFDL, ADS-C, or CPDLC, read Getting Started first.

You may be familiar with ADS-B/Mode S tooling such as jet1090:

  • ADS-B tells you where an aircraft is (surveillance);
  • Datalink helps explain what the aircraft and ground systems are communicating (communication with some surveillance): clearances, acknowledgements, surveillance contracts, route intent, ATIS/weather requests, OOOI events, and airline operational messages.

Datalink or datalink

We refer here to datalink in plain characters for the concept, and to datalink for the software.

  • Demodulate VHF ACARS, VDL Mode 2, and HFDL from files and supported SDR sources.
  • Decode ACARS frames, AVLC/VDL2 frames, HFDL messages, ADS-C payloads, CPDLC paths, and selected airline operational payloads.
  • Ingest and structure airframes.io websocket rows when you want worldwide live data.
  • Normalizes decoded traffic into a common JSONL event envelope with source, receiver, aircraft, kinematic, raw-frame, and protocol-body fields.
  • Publishes to stdout/files and optional Redis topics for integration with research tools, dashboards, or tangram.

airframes.io

airframes.io provide a good infrastructure. Consider contributing to their feed.

Where to go next

  1. Getting Started — the datalink concepts and how datalink maps to them.
  2. Installation — current build/install notes.
  3. Sources — files, stdin, SDRs, and Airframes.io event sources.
  4. Output & Schema — the normalized JSON event shape.
  5. Configuration — merged receiver TOML examples.