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A TETRA and DMR Comparison
Thursday, April 01, 2010 | Comments
Photo courtesy Motorola
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People perceive the term digital as more advanced and better than analog,
Hytera America Files for because digital presents a number of attractive advantages to users. Two
Chapter 11 Bankruptcy digital technologies — TETRA and Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) — offer MAGAZINES IN PRINT
different benefits, but which is the right choice for your system? When a
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user decides to upgrade a mobile radio system, many factors should be
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considered. TETRA often presents high infrastructure costs. Are these
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costs appropriate for the given benefits compared with the emerging DMR
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solution? Understanding some of the key points that characterize each of
the digital technologies will help you make the best decision.
History of the Standards
TETRA standards development started in the European
Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in the mid-1980s by a group
of radio manufacturers. The initial requirement was a digital standard to
replace the MPT 1327 analog trunked networks and to introduce a number
of new features. The primary market segment intended for TETRA was the
public access mobile radio (PAMR) market, where operators charge users
service fees for trunked radio services. In the 1980s, many European
countries had a strong interest in national PAMR systems for private
dispatch communications and telephony. The standard specifications were
written following the main needs of a PAMR system to maximize traffic
capability.
ETSI chose a TDMA access and modulation schema to decrease the cell
dimension and to increase traffic density. More traffic equals more
business. ETSI spent several years specifying the standard because of the
high complexity of the initial requirements — efficient linear modulation,
vocoder selection, powerful protocols, field experimental tests and others.
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During the same time, GSM networks expanded their coverage outside
towns with reasonable and decreasing costs. As a result, an important part
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of the mobile radio market intended for TETRA was devoured by GSM
technology. The huge effort needed to develop TETRA, together with the Start with Sierra to Implement your FirstNet™
market contraction, produced economic disasters for many companies Strategy
involved in TETRA’s development. The surviving companies identified a
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services. The manufacturers, with the contribution of some European your public safety fleet to
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TETRA is the most popular solution for public safety in Europe, although Wireless • What are the
the costs and economic crisis have slowed implementation in some benefits of FirstNet? •
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DMR’s history is shorter and more recent. The DMR standard was published by ETSI in 2006 and optimized at 14? • Which Sierra Wireless devices are FirstNet
the end of 2007. DMR was developed to substitute analog two-way radio systems with a pin-to-pin digital Ready?
solution, meaning the digital system should perform the same coverage and application schema — repeater, READ MORE
multisite network, simulcast and trunking — as the previous analog network. Motorola played an essential role
in the specification activities and was the first actor in this new segment of the professional mobile radio (PMR)
market. Less effort was needed to develop a DMR radio, because DMR is a less complex technology than SPONSORED NEWS
TETRA. The standard offered a reasonable investment for several radio manufacturers. Motorola, Selex Volatile Times Call for Versatile Mission Critical
Communications, HYT, Funkwerk and Radio Activity offer commercial DMR products, and Tait, Team Simoco Communications
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DMR and TETRA are digital standards, and they provide some similar benefits to end users — encryption, Communications
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specifies it, but no terminals yet perform time division full-duplex operation. continuity of critical operations while adjusting to
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Coverage versus Traffic. A customer should determine if it’s more important to fulfill high traffic needs or a
large coverage area. While TETRA is designed to support high traffic volumes with small cells and a large READ MORE
number of channels, DMR works with large cells similar to analog systems, but DMR isn’t optimized to manage
many channels. This point is important, because decreasing the cell radius may require more sites to cover the MOST READ
same area. DMR was developed to cover wide areas with low density.
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The TETRA modulation schema is a linear four TDMA channels in a 25-kilohertz channel. The modulation Cybersecurity Mobile App Assessment
implies that the maximum RF power available on TETRA portable terminals is lower than for DMR — up to 2
watts compared with 5 watts for DMR. Sensitivity is less in TETRA than DMR because of twice the bandwidth of Etherstack Partners with Samsung on
the receiver. In addition, TETRA works only in the UHF bands, so the propagation effects also reduce the MCPTT over LTE
coverage capability. DMR uses a robust fixed envelope modulation schema that provides the same RF power
and sensitivity of conventional analog systems. DMR offers similar coverage performance; no more sites are
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needed to change an existing system from analog to DMR technology. DMR performs with two TDMA channels
in 12.5-kilohertz spacing per carrier, so it requires a more expensive branching system to increase the number
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of desired channels. Some DMR trunked systems are in development, but they are not available yet.
Network Backbone. There are several media, including copper lines, multiplexed audio lines, UHF narrowband
channels, IP networks and public switched telephone network (PSTN), used to connect analog base stations.
The TETRA interconnection backbone must ensure a bandwidth of several Megabits per second (Mbps) to
serve the fast signaling needed for correct operations. It is hard to achieve such bandwidth in most analog
connection supports. The DMR bandwidth requirement is low. A few tens of kilobits per second (kbps) are
enough to carry both the two channels and all the related signaling. A narrowband UHF link also operating in
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nondirect visibility or a traditional phone modem can connect two or more DMR base stations. This is another
example of DMR pin-to-pin substitution of an existing analog installation.
Network Management. For an emergency organization, it is essential to efficiently manage all the
communications resources during disaster events. Many emergency services agencies have internal technical
services to guarantee fast and secure operations in extreme cases. In these occurrences, complexity should be
avoided, and technical staff must be able to easily modify, repair or reconfigure the system. A crash in a node of
the system should not cause a communications blackout. The complexity of TETRA infrastructure elements — advertisement
base stations and switching nodes — are not easy to understand, manage and reconfigure. TETRA networks
outsource maintenance activities. DMR systems are similar to well-known analog networks, and the main
operations don’t differ significantly. Staff skilled in analog radio can be trained to efficiently operate DMR
infrastructure, so mission-critical organizations can have full control of their mobile communications resources.
Analog-to-Digital Migration. Because of its analog/digital dual-mode feature, DMR offers a natural migration
path from analog to digital radio systems. The DMR standard covers all the most used analog solutions such as advertisement
single site, multisite, simulcast and trunking. A customer can start to implement DMR radio infrastructure over
an existing analog network, reusing sites, antennas, power supplies, branching, connection links and frequency
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licenses. If problems are discovered, they can be solved more easily in analog mode than in digital. The
customer can gradually implement the new DMR equipment working in dual mode and interoperating with the AT&T Adds New FirstNet Sites to
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TETRA migration presents a different scenario: TETRA is a revolution in the radio approach for infrastructure
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aspects and for end-user operations. TETRA offers few possibilities of interoperability between digital and
analog terminals. TETRA is a trunked-only standard and operates in UHF spectrum in Europe. There are also
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TETRA systems in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South and Latin America. Tuning a new digital system
could require some time to solve unknown problems in an unfamiliar environment. The migration from an We’ve Seen This Interference Movie
analog system to TETRA produces an abrupt discontinuity and requires a switch to the new radio system at the Before
same time.
Spectrum Efficiency. The spectral efficiency of TETRA must be considered accurately. TETRA gives three
(plus one for control) channels in 25-kilohertz channel spacing compared with the 6.25-kilohertz channel of
DMR when no control channel is requested. The lower carrier to interference (C/I) protection ratio of the TETRA
modulation and the poor adjacent channel selectivity reduce the spectral efficiency. It takes more distance to
reuse the same frequency and causes more spectral pollution. TETRA requires a continuous control channel on
air, so the power supply requirements of a base station may be several times greater than for DMR base
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stations. Unlike DMR, it is difficult to use solar cells to supply TETRA infrastructure.
The major difference is the modulation scheme. For pi/4-DQPSK modulation, TETRA requires super linear
power amplifiers that result in high DC power consumption and poor efficiency because of the combined
amplitude and phase modulation. The constant envelope modulation of DMR, 4FSK frequency modulation, has
an efficiency advantage over TETRA of a factor of about two to three.
Vendor Environment. TETRA takes advantage of a mature multivendor environment. The major advertisement
manufacturers have standardized and made interoperable radio platforms, so it is easy for a customer to select
the best supplier. Hundreds of successful installations provide confidence about the stability of the TETRA EVENTS
solution. DMR is too young for such an environment. There are some important ETSI unspecified points for
DMR such as the vocoder (AMBE II+ will likely be the de facto standard), interoperability tests, encryption July 2020
coding and most services including positioning. The manufacturers said they need interoperability to take
advantage of a true open market, but DMR presents some proprietary features. Some manufacturers are 2-2
developing trunked solutions for DMR, but based on available information, each vendor protocol looks different Webinar: Moving Certification Forward for
and incompatible. Mission-Critical Products
Costs. TETRA was designed to cover the PAMR market with every imaginable feature, so complexity and
development costs contribute to the final product cost. The trunking approach requires fast and expensive https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/3119218138281987851
dedicated switch nodes to run the full protocol. The connections between base stations and the nodes must
support several Mbps of bandwidth to avoid excessive signaling delays. The number of sites required to August 2020
perform the same coverage of an existing analog system may be twice or more. More sites mean not only a
higher initial investment, but also fixed costs because of maintenance, site rent, frequency licenses and 2-5
backbone links. Moreover, a linear modulation requires more expensive hardware and implies higher energy
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consumption and dissipation.
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TETRA offers advantages and disadvantages compared with DMR, and it is often the best choice for medium- https://www.apco2020.org/
to high-capacity trunked networks with high traffic volume and low coverage areas, such as large industrial
sites, large campuses, airports and similar locations. DMR offers a true replacement of analog systems with all 11 - 13
the benefits of a digital solution. Some care has to be taken when a trunked system is needed due to the ENTELEC Conference and Expo
proprietary and not-yet-available DMR trunked solutions. DMR is especially suited to large areas with relatively
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low traffic applications where simulcast gives the best performance.
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conference-expo/
31 - 9/4
Roberto Marengon is the managing director of Radio Activity, a radio communications engineering firm. He
UTC Telecom & Technology
started his career at Alcatel, developing the first Italian 900 MHz cordless telephone. He was the research and
development manager of Prod el SpA (formerly Marconi Group and now Selex Communications) for more than Virtual Conference and Expo
10 years, developing a new generation of simulcast networks. In 1998, he started engineering company SIEL https://utctelecom.org/
TRE Srl, focused on maritime radio applications, and launched Radio Activity in 2003. E-mail comments to
[email protected].
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