Land-Mobile Radio Communication Channel Occupancy, Waiting Time, and Spectrum Saturation

The operational utility of a shared land-mobile radio communication channel to any given user depends upon his waiting time to access the channel and the quality of the channel once it is available. This paper describes a method of obtaining waiting time estimates from measurements of channel occupancy made with a scanning receiver and discusses land mobile spectrum saturation in the context of waiting time. Definitions of terms are presented along with data illustrating the accuracy of waiting time estimates for simplex channels based on scanning receiver measurements.