TACS

Total Access Communication System (TACS) and ETACS are mostly-obsolete variants of Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) which was announced as the choice for the first two UK national cellular systems in Feb 1983.

  • Frequency range base station: 935.0125 MHz - 949.9875 MHz
  • Frequency range mobile station: 890.0125 MHz - 904.9875 MHz
  • Control channels: 21 for System A
  • Voice channels: 289 for System A
  • Control channels: 21 for System B
  • Voice channels: 289 for System B
  • Duplex distance: 45 MHz
  • Channel spacing: 25 KHz
  • Voice modulation: FM
  • Signaling modulation: carrier FSK
  • Frequency deviation: 6.4 KHz (FSK)
  • Mobile station transmit power: 10 or 4 Watts (vehicular) 1.6 or 0.63 Watts
  • Base station transmit power: ??? (around 50 Watts)

(J)TACS is the UK and Japanese version of the AMPS. There are three major differences:

  • Different channel frequencies
  • 6,400 Hz signaling rate (instead of 8,000 Hz)
  • Encoding of mobile station number

Refer to AMPS documentation, but use executable 'tacs' or 'jtacs' instead of 'amps'.


[Back to main page]