Japan: PDC

The primary Japanese digital cellular technology is entitled Personal Digital Cellular or PDC and was established as a standard in 1991 by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. It is a TDMA-based technology, which is replacing the analog NTT and JTACS systems, and will operate in the 800 and 1400 MHz frequency bands (Table 2.4). The motivation for PDC was similar to that of GSM-allowing roaming between different regions of the country.

  

Table 2.4: PDC Frequency Allocations

2#2

PDC multiplexes three timeslots onto each carrier, like IS-54/136, but has 25 kHz channel spacing to facilitate migration to PDC from the analog systems. PDC uses p/4-DQPSK modulation, also like IS-54/136, with interleaving. The signalling rate is 42 kbps. Mobile assisted handoffs are used, like in GSM and IS-54/136. With a typical frequency reuse factor of 4, the same calculation as in Section 2.10 results in a PDC relative system capacity of 6.3^2.46 times AMPS.