2.

MULTIPLE ACCESS TECHNIQUES:

FDMA, TDMA, CDMA; SYSTEM
CAPACITY COMPARISONS
2.1Time-division multiple access (TDMA)

GSM system (the pan-European)

TDMA
IS-136 or D-AMPS system(North American)

 Gain capacity over the first-generation FDMA systems by assigning multiple users to one
frequency channel.
 These second-generation TDMA systems are implicitly circuit-switched systems, as exemplified
by the modern digitally switched telephone system. Digital signals sent out on a given frequency
channel or band are transmitted in specified time slots (“circuits”) in a repetitive frame structure
operating at the carrier frequency assigned to that channel.
 Each user is assigned one or more of these time slots per frame, and keeps the
time slot as long as needed, i.e., until a “call” is completed. This is why the word
circuit is used.
• An example of such a repetitive frame structure containing N slots per frame
appears in Fig.1

Fig.1 TDMA slot structure

• Provision has to be made, of course, to distinguish both the beginning and end
of a frame, as well as to delineate the slots within a frame. As noted above,
users are each assigned one or more slots in a frame.
• These second-generation TDMA systems are effectively FDMA/TDMA systems, since
effectively FDMA/TDMA systems, since the entire frequency spectrum allocated to a
given system is, first, split into smaller frequency channels or bands, each centered
about a specified carrier frequency. Each such band is then time-slotted following a
specified frame structure, to accommodate multiple users.
• The entire FDMA/TDMA scheme may be diagrammed as shown in Fig. 2. A “channel”
then corresponds to one or more time slots within a given frequency band. In this
figure there appear M frequency bands, each using a different carrier frequency, and N
time slots per frame, assigned to a given carrier.

Fig.2 FDMA/TDMA
channel assignment
 In this figure there appear M frequency bands, each using a different carrier
frequency, and N time slots per frame, assigned to a given carrier. There are thus
potentially NM channels in this system.
 The North American D-AMPS or IS-136 mobile cellular system normally assigns
each user two time slots per frame. This effectively doubles the bit rate possible
per user over assigning one slot per frame only (twice as many bits are
transmitted per frame), but reduces the number of possible simultaneous users
correspondingly. In the GSM system one slot only per frame is assigned per user,
but users may hop among the different frequency channels to reduce the chance
of getting caught in a deep fade.(Control must of course be exerted to ensure only
one user at a time occupies any given channel.)

2.2 GSM
 Consider GSM as a specific example of a FDMA/TDMA system. As already
noted, in Europe this system has been allocated two 25 MHz spectral bands,
890–915 MHz uplink, in the reverse, MS to BS direction, and 935–960 MHz
downlink, in the forward, BS to MS direction. (GSM has also been adapted to
the 2 GHz band in Europe and North America, but we focus here only on the
900MHzsystem.) Each 25MHz band is, in turn, split into 200 kHz-wide bands.
 One such band is used as a guard band, so there are effectively 124 frequency assignments
allocated in each direction. GMSK transmission is used as the modulation technique, as noted
later. Each 200 kHz frequency band carries an 8-slot TDMA frame structure, frames repeating at
intervals of 4.615 msec. As noted above, each user is assigned one time slot per frame. There are
thus up to 124 × 8 = 992 channels available per GSM system. This number corresponds to the
number NM appearing in Fig.2. (A multi frame structure is also imposed on the system.
 The GSM frame structure is diagrammed in Fig. 6.3. Note that each time slot is 576.92_sec long and
contains 148 bits. Slots are separated by a guard time of 30.46 _sec, equivalent to 8.25 bits. Of the 148
bits per slot, 114 are data bits, placed in two groups of 57 bits each. Three bits (called T fields) each
define the beginning and end of a slot. A 26 bit training sequence provides necessary time
synchronization, and two 1-bit flag bits complete the slot. The system thus transmits at a bit rate of
154.25 bits/576.92 _sec = 270.833 kbps.

Fig.3 GSM frame structure

 This resultant bit transmission corresponds to a channel usage of 1.35bits/Hz
over the 200 kHz-wide frequency channel. Recall that in Chapter 5 we indicated
that GSM used 0.3 GMSK transmission. The 0.3 factor indicated that B/R = 0.3,
B being the low-pass 3 dB bandwidth and R the transmission bit rate. The 3 dB
transmission bandwidth is thus 0.6R = 162.5 kHz. The 200 kHz channel
bandwidth is the bandwidth between points approximately 10 dB down from the
center of the band (Steele, 1992: 540).