NXDN: A brief overview

NXDN is a very narrowband protocol employing 6.25/12.5 KHz FDMA technology (It is generally accepted that 12.5 kHz channel spacing is narrowband as per the FCC mandate.) (More on this later in The history of NXDN™).

NXDN™ is the result of a joint technical alliance between Icom Incorporated and JVC KENWOOD Corporation. At the beginning, the main goals of this collaboration were to provide a low complexity digital two-way radio protocol that satisfied the FCC narrowbanding mandate at the initially proposed deadline of 2005, be a future-proof protocol that would still be viable even when 12.5 kHz spectrum became full and to offer an alternative “de-facto” standard to the Land Mobile Radio (LMR) industry that allowed the development of digital radio products without the
excessive premium of some competing digital technologies.

The number of radio terminals alone provided by the vendors with product has reached well over half a million units worldwide by the end of 2011, and is growing in the tens of thousands each month. NXDN™ has truly become a “de-facto” protocol as per one of the initial goals mentioned above.