Digital Mobile Radio

Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) was developed by the European Telecommunications

Standards Institute (ETSI) and is used worldwide by professional mobile radio users.

DMR is divided into three tiers. Tier I is a single channel specification originally for the
European unlicensed dPMR446 service. It is a single channel FDMA 6.25 kHz bandwidth;
the standard supports peer-to-peer (mode 1), repeater (mode 2) and linked repeater (mode 3)
configurations. The use of the Tier I standard has been expanded into radios for use in other
than the unlicensed dPMR446 service.

Tier II is 2-slot TDMA 12.5 kHz wide peer-to-peer and repeater mode specification,
resulting in a spectrum efficiency of 6.25 kHz per channel. Each time slot can be either voice
and/or data depending upon system needs. IP Site Connect (IPSC) for interconnecting
repeaters over the Internet is vendor specific and is not part of the ETSI standards at this
time. Most amateur radio implementations of DMR are using voice on both time slots.

Tier III builds upon Tier II, adding trunking operation involving multiple repeaters at a
single site.

DMR has Forward Error Correction (FEC) which can correct small bit errors, slightly
extending the usable range and improving communication quality.

Features Of DMR-Digital Mobile Radio

Specification DMR Radio

Radio Technology type Digital
446 MHz for DMR Tier-I
Frequency of operation
66 to 960 MHz for DMR Tier-II and Tier-III
Frequency Channel
12.5 KHz
Bandwidth
Number of time slots per
2
channel
• FDMA (one band for uplink side and other band for
downlink side), 1 pair of frequencies used for Tx/Rx
Access Technique
direction.
• TDMA (2 time slots per channel)
Traffic type Both voice calls and data calls are supported
4 state FSK, 4 possible symbols, 4800 symbols/sec, 9600
Modulation Scheme
bits/sec ,
Two-Slot TDMA

DMR enables a single 12.5 kHz channel to support two simultaneous and independent calls.
This is achieved using TDMA, Time Division Multiple Access. Under TDMA DMR retains
the 12.5 kHz channel width and divides it into two alternating timeslots A and B (illustrated
in figure 1) where each timeslot acts as a separate communication path. In figure 1 Radios 1
and 3 are talking on time slot 1 and Radios 2 and 4 are talking on timeslot 2.

Timeslot TDMA structure of DMR

DMR Air interface

There are two frequency bands viz. uplink band and downlink band. In the uplink and
downlink bands, each channels consist of 12.5 KHz bandwidth each. Each channel is further
used at two different time slots using TDMA technique. These slots are known as logical
channels while frequency is known as physical channel. Hence there are two logical
channels per physical channel.

In each physical channel , one logical channel is used for traffic and the other for control
information. Traffic channel carries either voice or data information. Control channel is used
for various functions viz. manages and controls subscriber unit registration, call requests,
channel assignments etc. It periodically broadcasts useful system related informations to
DMR portable subscriber units. Control channel can also be used to transmit short data
messages in case of emergency situations.

Hence DMR channels are of two types physical channel (i.e. frequency) and logical channel
(i.e. time slots). Further, logical channel can be further categorized into traffic channel and
control channel based on information carried on it.
 DMR Air interface

DMR Network Architecture

As shown DMR consists of two main elements Base station and portable subscriber radio
units. The area to be covered using DMR technology is divided into number of cell sites.
Each cell site consists of one or more than one Base Stations (BSs). Each Base Station can
be interfaced with LAN using IP swithes or with WAN using routers. Often network
gateways are used in order to have connectivity with PSTN/PBX to provide connections with
analog and digital telephone systems.

DMR Repeater

DMR radios are able to communicate with each other directly without a centralised system,
but this is not always an ideal situation. Signals between radios connecting directly to each
other can be hampered by obstructions in the line-of-sight between them such as trees,
buildings, and hills.
A DMR repeater added to the system allows radios to send their communications via a
central point which repeats the message to the rest of the system. By installing a repeater
high up (often on top of a building) the calls to the repeater are less affected by the
obstructions. It also allows radios located far away from the repeater in opposite directions to
communicate with each other, effectively increasing the range of the system.

Modulation

In the 4-level FSK modulation employed by DMR, each set of two bits (a dibit) is
represented as a symbol with a fixed deviation from the transmit frequency. With a rate of
4,800 symbols/s a data rate of 9600 bit/s is achieved (utilising both TDMA slots). The four
frequency deviations from the transmit frequency and the information bit values are given in
Table below.

Information bits
Symbol 4FSK deviation
BIT 1 BIT 0
0 1 +3 +1,944 kHz
0 0 +1 +0,648 kHz
1 0 -1 -0,648 kHz
1 1 -3 -1,944 kHz

Dibit symbol mapping to 4FSK deviation

TDMA structure

The DMR protocol is built around a 30 ms TDMA 2-slot structure. In the spaces between the
transmitted blocks the protocol calls for the unit to be receiving. This therefore allows
signalling and/or voice in the reverse direction, even during a conversation. The perception
of the user will be that this unit is providing a full duplex conversation.

A generalised timing diagram of exchanges between the MS (mobile station) and the BS
(base station) is shown in Diagram below where the time slots for the two TDMA physical
channels are labelled "1" and "2". The inbound transmission is labelled "MS TX" and the
outbound transmission is labelled "BS TX".

TDMA timing
overview

• The inbound channel (MS TX) has an unused guard time between bursts to allow for Power
Amplifier ramping and propagation delay.

• The outbound channel, which transmits continuously when the BS is activated, uses the
equivalent of this guard time to insert a Common Announcement Channel (CACH) between
bursts for traffic channel management (framing and access) and low speed signaling. If no
information is available to transmit in channel 1 and/or channel 2, the BS transmits idle
messages to fill out the bursts.

• All bursts have either a synchronization pattern or an embedded signaling field located in
the center of the burst.

Basic channel types

There are three main basic channel types used by DMR:

• Traffic channel with CACH - the same as the BS TX example in §5.3 above. This channel
type is used for outbound BS transmissions but is also used for the continuous transmission
mode between MS units used for Tier 1 DMR.

• Traffic channel with guard time - the same as the MS TX example in §5.3 above. This
channel type is used for inbound transmissions from an MS to a two-frequency BS. Three
use cases are available for this channel type as illustrated in Diagram below:

Traffic channel with guard time

Transmissions on the reverse channel can be used, for example, to support the operation of
applications during speech sessions, for example to tell a transmitting radio to stop, because
an emergency call is waiting, or to inform it of its signal strength, so that it can adjust it’s
transmit power.

• Bi-directional channel -This channel type is used for direct mode communication between
MS units. The channel consists of a Forward and a Backward TDMA traffic channel on the
same frequency separated by guard times. Three use cases are available for this channel type
as illustrated in Diagram below:
 Bi-directional channel

Packet data protocol (PDP)

If the PDP is required to transport a message whose length is bigger than a maximum length,
the message is first split into fragments. Each fragment is then mapped into a single packet
consisting of a sequence of data blocks 1 to m preceded by one or two header blocks. Each
block is protected by its own Forward Error Correcting (FEC) code. The fragmentation and
packetisation is illustrated in Diagram below:

Decomposition of a datagram into packets (single slot)

Vocoder

A vocoder (voice encoder) compresses the transmitted digital voice signal to enable it to fit
into a smaller bandwidth channel and at the receiving end it uncompresses the signal.
Different digital standards use different vocoder technologies. A full-rate vocoder
compresses voice sufficiently for it to fit in a narrow-band (12.5 kHz) channel. A half-rate
vocoder is necessary to compress it enough to fit into a 6.25 kHz channel or in one 12.5 kHz
TDMA timeslot such as used by DMR.

Encryption

Although DMR was primarily developed for civil and industrial applications the protection
of the confidentiality of the exchanged information can be important. The DMR Association
has defined the following options for traffic encryption:

- ARC4 40 bit
- DES 64 bit
- AES128 128 bit
 - AES256 256 bit
Both, voice and data traffic are encrypted.

DMR services
Services Supplementary services
Late Entry
Individual Call
Open Voice Channel Mode Call
Talking Party Identification
Late Entry
Unaddressed Voice Call
Group Call
Voice Open Voice Channel Mode Call
Talking Party Identification
Late Entry
All Call
Talking Party Identification
Late Entry
Broadcast Call
Talking Party Identification
IP over PDP -
Confirmed Packet Data Protocol(PDP)
Short Data over PDP -
IP over PDP -
Unconfirmed Packet Data Protocol
Short Data over PDP -

Advantages of DMR

• DMR is a open standard and hence portable DMR handset from one manufacturer can work
with base station from other manufacturer and vice versa. Moreover portable handsets from
two different manufacturers can communicate or interoperate with each other.

• DMR provides digital quality audio. This eliminates any external noise and hence can
provide better audio quality even at the edge of the cell of any site.

• It provides double capacity due to two time slots per channel using TDMA technique.

• It is easy to migrate as it supports both analog and digital modes.

• DMR handset battery has longer life.

• DMR supports called ID and hence ID of person who initiates the call is visible to all the
recipients.

• DMR offers secured communication as it uses encryption. Keys are exchanged before the
communication starts so that voice/data goes encrypted over the channel.

• There are numerous applications of DMR (Digital Mobile Radio), some of these are remote
monitoring (telemetry), SCADA, vehicle automation, GPS etc