Air interface of the future European fully digital trunk radio system

The European Telecommunications Standard Institute (ETSI) plans to release the standard for a system known as TETRA (Trans-European Trunk Radio). The design of the radio interface is reported. After a brief explanation of the adopted time division multiple access (TDMA) frame structure and mapping of traffic and control channels, a detailed discussion is presented on: power control of the mobiles during the access to network; the achievable bit error rate (BER) on various propagation channels (including hilly and urban area); and an original scheme to improve the immunity against the cochannel interference.