Advantages of Digital Networks Vs Analog Networks

Advantages of Digital Networks Over Analog Networks

There are three main cellular technologies: Older Analog/FDMA, Modern TDMA, Newer CDMA

All the newer multiple access techniques like TDMA and FDMA depend on digital technology and digital signals. Even the public telephone system uses digital technology as their standard. If someone makes a call in analog on the public phone network, it's converted into digital automatically over the public phone network. Digital has several advantages over analog transmission:

Analog technology was built in the early 1980's. Analog allows a cellular phone to transmit signals by sending voice, video, and data that are always changing, and so are the network systems. Analog is considered an older method of modulating radio signals so that they can transmit voice or data information.

Digital technology is much more efficient when using band-width. Due to digital compression, more data can flow over a network, efficiently.

Digital is encrypted, difficult to decode, and is more secure than analog.

Digital allows easy integration with personal communication systems (PCS) such as hand held devices, palm pilots and hopefully in the future everything digital.

Digital offers superior cellular voice transmission quality over long distances. Most cellular users also experience better reception and connections.

Since Digital is so efficient, It can lower average transmitter power as digital works 'less harder' as analog transmissions.

Digital enables smaller and less expensive individual receivers and transmitters. Anytime cellular carriers can save money using a superior technology, that's where they will go - and right now it's digital.