DMR stands for Digital Mobile Radio and uses the Motorola TRBO protocol for communications. Like other digital modes such as D-Star, C4FM and APCO P25, the TRBO protocol converts your voice into a digital form and sends it out via RF (with other bits of information included) and allows you to communicate to other DMR radios and also DMR repeaters, which are networked together around the world via the internet.
What makes DMR stand out from some of the other digital modes is that it utilizes TDMA (Time-Division Multiple Access) to divide a single frequency into 2 distinct “channels” or time slots. By doing this, you can have two conversations going on at the SAME TIME, using one frequency.
Imagine using one frequency while radio A is talking to radio B on time slot 1, and radio C is talking to radio D on time slot 2 … SIMULTANEOUSLY. Pretty neat, huh?
To make matters a little more fun and complicated, each radio must have a unique Radio ID for digital identification between radios and you can also use Talkgroups to separate traffic and target specific groups of DMR users. More from DMR for Dummies…..
