Digital mobile communication systems have been developed to cope with remarkable growth of the existing analog cellular telephone market. The digital cellular system needs to meet the following requirements: higher frequency efficiency, increased system capacity, new services including ISDN services, and network reliability improvements. New techniques supporting digital mobile radio sevices are presented in this paper, with special focus on TDMA radio link control. Radio channel and signalling structures are designed to achieve spectrum efficiency and flexibility. A random access scheme giving excellent access capability is shown. This paper also presents the system design and configurations of a TDMA digital cellular system based on the Japan standard, which is being developed by NTT Mobile Communications Network Inc. The system is based on the OSI model to enhance system flexibility for future services. Various techniques and devices to achieve economical and compact base stations and portable telephones are developed: multiple-carrier amplifier with extremely low distortion, facsimile/data adaptors with error free and high throughput, coherent detection with adaptive carrier tracking, and so on.