Spectral and Economic Efficiencies of Land Mobile Radio Systems

A variety of land mobile radio systems are compared by their spectral and economic efficiencies in providing various user services, system types covered are private one-channel, shared repeater one channel, controlled-access one-channel, trunked multichannel, and cellular. Spectral efficiency is defined to be the number of mobile users that can be served per MHz of spectrum in a core urban area, while economic efficiency is the average system cost per mobile. Both efficiencies vary with the type of usage, hence they are calculated for three major usages-mobile telephone service, dispatch service emergency, and dispatch service nonemergency. Services are described via seven "service parameters," namely call holding time (average), tolerable average wait for channel access, peak busy hour utilization per mobile, audio quality (S/N), noise levels tolerable, and service range. Sensitivity of the basic results to variations in the service parameters are also computed and discussed.