CDMA and TDMA Q: What is the difference between CDMA and TDMA?

A: These are two very different methodologies use to accomplish the same task, use frequency spectrum much more efficiently than the traditional dedicated fixed frequency transmitting system. The goal is to dramatically increase the number of essentially simultaneous users within a specific portion of radio spectrum. Both methods accomplish this. CDMA is short for Code-Division Multiple Access, a digital cellular technology that uses spread-spectrum techniques. CDMA does not assign a specific frequency for each user placing or receiving a call. Individual conversations are encoded with a pseudo-random digital sequence scheme. The receiving equipment must be able to decode the received signal by having the ability to replicate this pseudo-random digital sequencing. CDMA is actually a military technology first used during World War II by the English allies to foil German attempts at jamming radio transmissions. The allies transmitted different parts of important information over several frequencies, instead of a single frequency, hence making it considerably more difficult for the Germans to pick up and assimilate the complete signal. Because Qualcomm, Inc., created the communication chips for CDMA technology, it had access to the classified information, and once the information became available to the public, they became the first to commercialize it. TDMA is short for Time Division Multiple Access, a technology for delivering digital wireless service using time-division multiplexing (TDM). TDMA technology divides a radio frequency into time slots and then allocates these time slots to multiple calls. In this way, a single frequency can support multiple, simultaneous data channels. The receiving equipment must be able to decode the received signal by decoding the received signal and reconstitute it using the same time slot selection algorithm as was used when it was encoded and transmitted. TDMA is used by the GSM digital cellular system.