In the cases where continuous transmission is not required, there TDMA is used instead of FDMA. The features of TDMA include the following.
- TDMA shares a single carrier frequency with several users where each users makes use of non-overlapping time slots.
- Data transmission in TDMA is not continuous, but occurs in bursts. Hence handsoff process is simpler.
- TDMA uses different time slots for transmission and reception thus duplexers are not required.
- TDMA has an advantage that is possible to allocate different numbers of time slots per frame to different users.
- Bandwidth can be supplied on demand to different users by concatenating or reassigning time slot based on priority.