The narrow bandwidth and spreading of the carrier enables the optimum use to be made of the
spectrum, by ensuring that adjacent channels do not need a large guard band between them to
make sure that interference levels are kept to acceptable limits. Finally, the fact that the output
signal level is constant enab les more efficient power amplifiers to be used. This enables the power
amplifiers in the mobiles to consume less powe r for a given output level, thereby lengthening
battery life.
The data transported by the carrier serve up to eight different users. Even though the full
data rate on the carrier is approximately 270 kbps, some of this supports the management
overhead, and therefore the data rate allotted to each time slot is only 24.8 kbps. ...