FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
Wireless Communication Networks
Multiple Access Techniques
Part 01
Michael Ibrahim
ECE Dept., Faculty of Engineering
Ain Shams University
Spring 2025
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
Multiple Access Techniques
Multiple Access (MA) techniques allow multiple users to talk
to a BS simultaneously.
Examples of multiple access techniques include:
1 Frequency-Division Multiple Access (FDMA)
2 Time-Division Multiple Access (TDMA)
3 Code-Division Multiple Access (CDMA)
4 Space-Division Multiple Access (SDMA).
In FDMA and TDMA the network allocates the radio
resources of a wireless channel through the use of
disjointedness (i.e., orthogonality) in frequency and time,
respectively.
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
Multiple Access Techniques
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
FDMA
FDMA is the oldest, and conceptually most simple,
multiaccess method.
Each user is assigned a frequency (sub)band as illustrated in
the next figure.
The assignment of frequency bands is usually done during call
setup, and retained during the whole call.
FDMA is usually combined with the Frequency Domain
Duplexing (FDD), so that two frequency bands (with a fixed
duplex distance) are assigned to each user: one for downlink
(BS-to-MS) and one for uplink (MS-to-BS) communication.
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
FDMA
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
FDMA
Pure FDMA is conceptually very simple, and has some advantages
for implementation:
The transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX) require little digital
signal processing.
(Temporal) synchronization is simple. Once synchronization
has been established during the call setup, it is easy to
maintain it by means of a simple tracking algorithm, as
transmission occurs continuously.
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
FDMA
However, pure FDMA also has significant disadvantages, especially
when used for speech communications.
Frequency synchronization and stability are difficult.
For speech communications, each frequency subband is quite
narrow (typically between 5 and 30 kHz).
Local oscillators thus must be very accurate and stable; jitters
in the carrier frequency result in adjacent channel interference.
High spectral efficiency also requires the use of very steep
filters to extract the desired signal.
Both accurate oscillators and steep filters are expensive, and
thus undesirable.
If they are not admissible, guard bands can be used to mitigate
filter requirements. This, however, reduces the spectral
efficiency of the system.
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
FDMA
However, pure FDMA also has significant disadvantages, especially
when used for speech communications.
Sensitivity to fading.
Since each user is assigned a distinct frequency band (5–30
kHz), these bands are narrower than for other multiaccess
methods (like TDMA, CDMA).
For such narrow subbands, fading is flat in practically all
environments.
This has the advantage that no equalization is required; the
drawback is that there is no frequency diversity.
Remember that frequency diversity is mainly provided by signal
components that are more than one channel coherence
bandwidth apart.
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
FDMA
However, pure FDMA also has significant disadvantages, especially
when used for speech communications.
Intermodulation.
The BS needs to transmit multiple speech channels, each of
which is active the whole time.
Typically, a BS uses 20–100 frequency channels.
If these signals are amplified by the same power amplifier, we
will suffer from Intermodulation which lie within the
transmission band causing interference.
We thus need either a separate amplifier for each speech
channel, or a highly linear amplifier for the composite signal –
each of these solutions makes a BS more expensive.
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
FDMA
It is for these reasons that FDMA is mostly used for the following
applications:
Analog communications systems: here, FDMA is the only
practicable multiple access method.
Combination of FDMA with other multiple access methods:
The spectrum allocated for a service (or a network operator) is
divided into larger subbands, each of which is used for serving
a group of users.
Within this group, multiple access is done by means of another
multiple access method – e.g., TDMA or CDMA.
Most current wireless systems use FDMA in that way.
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
FDMA
It is for these reasons that FDMA is mostly used for the following
applications:
High-data-rate systems:
The disadvantages of FDMA are mostly relevant if each user
requires only a small bandwidth (e.g., 20 kHz).
The situation can be different for wireless Local Area Networks
(LANs), where a single user requires a bandwidth on the order
of 20 MHz, and only a few frequency channels are available.
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
TDMA
For TDMA, different users transmit at different times rather
than at different frequencies as illustrated in the next figure.
Time is subdivided into N timeslots of fixed duration, and
each user is assigned one such timeslot.
During the assigned timeslot, the user can transmit with a
high data rate (as it can use the whole system bandwidth);
subsequently, it remains silent for the next pN ´ 1q timeslots,
when other users take their turn.
This process is then repeated periodically.
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
TDMA
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
TDMA
At first glance, this approach has the same performance as
FDMA: a user transmits only during 1{N of the available
time, but then occupies N times the bandwidth. However,
there are some important practical differences.
1 Users occupy a larger bandwidth. This allows them to exploit
the frequency diversity available within the bandwidth
allocated to the system. On the flipside, equalizers are required
to combat Inter-Symbol Interference (ISI) for most operating
environments; this increases the effort needed for digital signal
processing.
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
TDMA
Another important practical difference is that:
2 Temporal guard intervals are required. There has to be
sufficient guard time to compensate for the runtime of the
signal between the MS and BS.
It is possible that one MS is far away from the BS, while the
one that transmits in the subsequent timeslot is very close to
the BS and thus has negligible runtime. Measures need to be
taken to make sure that the signals from the two users do not
overlap at the BS.
Note, however, that there is no need for frequency guard
bands, as each user completely fills up the assigned band.
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
TDMA
Another important practical difference is that:
3 Each timeslot might require a new synchronization and
channel estimation, as transmission is not continuous.
In GSM, for instance, 17% of a timeslot are used for
synchronization.
If the time between two timeslots assigned to one user is larger
than coherence time, the channel has changed between these
two timeslots, and a new channel estimate is required.
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
TDMA
Another important practical difference is that:
4 During its period of inactivity in a TDMA system, the MS can
“listen” to transmission on other timeslots.
This is especially useful for the preparation of handovers from
one BS to another, when the MS has to find out whether a
neighboring BS would offer better quality, and has
communications channels available.
TDMA is often combined with FDMA, e.g., in GSM (see
figure below).
In contrast, pure FDMA is used mainly in analog cellular and
cordless systems.
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
TDMA
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
Duplexing
In a cellular system, duplexing serves to separate the uplink
(MS to BS) and downlink (BS to MS) transmission.
We have two types of duplexing: Time Domain Duplexing
(TDD) and Frequency Domain Duplexing (FDD).
In TDD, uplink data are sent at times that are different from
downlink transmission times as illustrated in the next figure.
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
Duplexing
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
Duplexing
In FDD, uplink and downlink data are sent in different
frequency bands as illustrated in the next figure.
TDD is often used in conjunction with TDMA. In such a case,
the available time is divided not into N , but rather 2N
timeslots, where each of the N users is assigned one timeslot
for the uplink, and one for the downlink.
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
Duplexing
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
Duplexing
On the other hand, the use of TDD in an FDMA system
would counteract many of the advantages inherent in FDMA
(continuous transmission and reception, which simplifies
synchronization), while retaining the disadvantages.
FDD can be used in combination with any multiaccess
method.
In most cases, there is a fixed duplexing distance – i.e., a fixed
frequency difference between the uplink and the downlink
band.
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
Duplexing
For both TDD and FDD, it is interesting to consider the
question as to whether the channel for uplink and downlink
are identical.
We find that for TDD, the requirement is that the duplexing
time is much smaller than the coherence time, while for FDD
systems, the requirement is that the frequency duplexing
distance is much smaller than the coherence bandwidth.
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FDMA
TDMA
Duplexing
Duplexing
A combination of FDD and TDD occurs in the case of
semi-duplex systems, where transmission and reception at a
single MS are distinguished by both time and frequency.
An example of semi-duplex is GSM, where TX and RX
operations use different frequency bands, and furthermore are
offset by 2 timeslots from each other.
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