Field Guide · term

Also known as: FDMA

FDMA (frequency-division multiple access) is a channel-access method in which each call occupies its own frequency channel.1

frequency call Acall Bcall Ccall D
FDMA gives each call its own frequency channel — the access method of P25 Phase 1.

How it works

Capacity scales with the number of frequencies available; adding conversations means adding channels. P25 Phase 1, NXDN, and dPMR use FDMA.

Relevance to SDR

On an FDMA system each voice channel is a separate frequency the receiver tunes to; contrast with TDMA, which shares one frequency across time slots.

Sources

  1. Frequency-division multiple access — Wikipedia, on the one-call-per-frequency access method. 

See also