A practical example of how TDM/TDMA techniques are used for rural communications

The use of time division multiplexing and time division multiple access, TDM/TDMA, techniques is not new in the world of communications. These techniques have been used successfully in satellite communications for some years. The success of this technique led Alcatel SEL to develop a rural telephone system called Rurtel. Rurtel uses TDM techniques from the switching equipment to the subscriber and TDMA techniques from the subscriber to the switch. The TDM signal is continuously transmitted while the TDMA signal is transmitted in bursts. This gives effective energy saving at the subscriber end. The use of six systems has been studied over a period of one month to determine the traffic generated in rural areas. The six systems include the smallest and largest systems deployed to date. The statistics of the systems have been normalized on a system basis and then averaged over the six systems. To try to determine the peak traffic density requirements the statistical information has been viewed on a monthly, a weekday and a weekend basis