TDMA technology

Figure 14: The GSM system uses TDMA to split a frequency into time slots.

Time division multiple access (TDMA) is the access method GSM uses for shared networks. GSM uses TDMA to raise the efficiency of the network. GSM uses TDMA to raise the efficiency of the network.Using TDMA, a narrow band that is 30 kHz wide and 6.7 milliseconds long is split time-wise into three time slots. Narrow band means channels in the traditional sense. Each conversation gets the radio for one-third of the time. This is possible because voice data that has been converted to digital information is compressed so that it takes up significantly less transmission space. Therefore, TDMA has three times the capacity of an analog system using the same number of channels.