Difference between multiplexing and multiple access techniques?

Modern telephone networks allow bandwidths in their channels that are much larger than those is
needed for a digitalized telephone channel. Basically, a number of channels share a common
transmission medium with the aim of reducing costs and complexity in the network.
Multiplexing is defined as the process by which several signals from different channels share a
channel with greater capacity. When the sharing is carried out with respect to a remote resource,
such as a satellite, this is referred to as multiple access rather than multiplexing. There are
various ways of performing this sharing:
1. FDM/FDMA (Frequency Division Multiplexing/Frequency Division Multiple Access):
Assigns a portion of the total bandwidth to each of the channels.
2. TDM/TDMA (Time Division Multiplexing/Time Division Multiple Access): Assigns all of
the transport capacity sequentially to each of the channels.
3. CDMA (Code Division Multiplexing Access): In certain circumstances it is possible to
transmit multiple signals in the same frequency and at the same time, with the receiver
being responsible for separating them. This technique has been used for years in military
technology, and is based on extending the spectrum of the signal and reducing the
transmission power.
4. PDMA (Polarization Division Multiple Access): Given that polarization can be
maintained, the polarization direction can be used as a multiple access technique,
although when there are many obstacles noise can make it unsuitable, which is why it is
not usually used in indoor installations. Outside, however, it is widely used to increase
transmission rates in installations that use microwaves.
5. SDMA (Space Division Multiple Access): With directional aerials, the same frequency
can be re-used provided the alignment of the aerials is correctly adjusted. There is a great
deal of interference but this system lets frequencies obtain a high degree of reusability.
What is the difference among Modulation, Multiplexing & Multiple Access?
MODULATION:
Usually, the signal that we want to transmit, say a speech signal with 4000 Hz frequency,
will require a very big antenna. For any signal the frequency f is related to wavelength L as
c = L * f (i)
Where c is velocity of light. And antenna length is generally taken as L/2 which simply
means for our case antenna length is 75000 m, obviously this size of antenna is too big to
use on day to day basis. That is why we take our speech signal or the desired signal and take
another high frequency signal known as carrier (carrier can be any signal but should have
high frequency and in practice we use a simple continuous wave signal), now we alter one
or more parameters of this career signal in accordance with our desired signal, this
parameters can be any one or combination of parameters. The basic parameters are

amplitude, frequency, and phase of the signal. The result of this alteration we get is known
as modulated signal, the desired signal which we wanted to transmit is known as modulating
signal also known as base band signal and modulated signal is also known as band pass
signal. The whole process is known as MODULATION. There are many types of
modulation starting from amplitude modulation popularly known as AM, frequency
modulation (FM), QPSK, PCM, GMSK, QAM etc.
MULTIPLEXING:
Basically there are two types of system, time domain and frequency domain. In time domain
we transmit frames, and in frequency domain we transmit in accordance with frequency.
Now if there is more than one source of signal and we want to transmit them together then
we implement multiplexing. In multiplexing we mix the source signals (off course with
some precautions) say if we want to mix them in time domain then our frame will contain
some packets form source A and some packets from source B and so on depending upon the
constraints of the channel and time frame. The signals that source are generating can either
be modulated signals or we can even send our multiplexed signal to the modulator and then
modulate the signal. At the receiving end be demultiplex the signals. In multiplexing we do
not provide a dedicated resource to a single source. I.e. we do not dedicate the complete
time frame to a single source (in our case it is time frame). Multiplexing is also seen as you
are travelling on a four lane road and suddenly it get narrower and turned to single lane, at
this point the traffic police will allow one car from each lane to drive through that narrow
single lane, this is what we called MULTIPLEXING.
MULTIPLE ACCESS:
As the name suggest, multiple access means multiple users can access the channel or link.
Multiple access provides dedicated resources to the user (with a time constraint) in
comparison to the multiplexing which does not provide any type of resources. There are
many type of Multiple access schemes like FDMA frequency division multiple access,
TDMA time division multiple access, CDMA code division multiple access, SDMA space
division multiple access etc. take the example of FDMA, the whole frequency band is
divided into small frequency bands called channels, now each channel is having certain
capacity to take the traffic say a channel can accommodate single user at time, then the
whole frequency bandwidth can be access by as many users as there are channels,
mathematically if we are having a bandwidth of 200 KHz and channel bandwidth is 50 KHz
then it means we can accommodate 4 users at a time by giving 50 KHz channel to each. This
is so called multiple access, i.e. multiple users can access the bandwidth simultaneously and
we do not require any additional hardware at the receiving end to separate the desired user
from the other users as we do in Multiplexing. In reality the concept of Multiple Access is
more complicated and In GSM each channel can accommodate 8 users at a time and
each channel has 200 KHz bandwidth.
Multiplexing is the technique and multiple access is the way to use this technique.