Digital Mobile Radio - DMR

[Outlander Systems]

Well...

The worst answer ever: It depends.

To a certain extent, that *is* true. I wish I still had the graphics from my presentation, but they're gone. Essentially, it's a double-edged sword. Yes, unlike analog, which essentially tapers off until the signal becomes overcome with the noise level, and intelligibility is lost, digital has a "digital cliff" where, once a distance-threshold is crossed, there's a small area where the audio becomes garbled/robotic and then the signal abruptly drops.

It's been my experience that, typically, the "digital cliff" is at, or slightly beyond, the intelligibility threshold of its analog counterpart.

Generally speaking:

1) Digital maintains the same quality throughout the maximum transmission distance
2) Analog loses quality as distance increases until the signal cannot be differentiated from the noise.

Because both are limited to LOS only, the maximum range of both are relatively comparable.

Hope that helps.

It is my limited understanding that, even with digital simplex, that it may not carry a weak signal at all once it passes a certain threshold (longer range) while a weak analog signal can still be received, through the noise. The audio clarity of digital will be better across the board than analog, but once the digital signal is too weak it won't come through at all. Is this correct?

[TXBK]

Cool, thanks. I didn't expect digital to have a longer range than analog, but I guess that isn't definite and still depends.

I have heard the audio on a DMR radio, and it sounded really good on simplex. Better than Dstar and analog.

[the_master_midget]

Best thing I have used is a delorme Inreach makes a sat phone look dumb it syncs to your iPhone for text messaging. I own a fishing boat in AK and sat phones are sometimes spotty. Garmin bought delorme but if you can find the older models the battery life rocks and sometimes they can be found for under $200 it has a monthly fee, but it is way cheaper then a sat phone. radios rock for short range, I carry a Garmin Rino that accepts AA batteries and I get great battery life with lithium AA, its a back up with GPS also. but if your looking for a solid way to stay in contact if your in a shit situation the inreach system is the way to go.