Airnet Communications Corporation

Other

Terry L Williams

Ronald R Carney

Jeffrey Wilson Smith

Thomas R Schmutz

John F Schwaller

John R Noll

Christopher J Peters

A spectrally efficient wireless communication system that includes a plurality of base stations communicating indirectly with a plurality of wireless communications devices through a plurality of repeaters. The method can generally comprise communicating indirectly between a first base station and a wireless communication device using a first repeater and a first RF backhaul link. A control processor associated with the first base station can control a first smart antenna system. The system selectively configures the first smart antenna system to spatially isolate communications on the first RF backhaul from communications on a second RF backhaul of a second repeater.

Method for improving RF spectrum efficiency with repeater backhauls

A method for dynamically allocating signal processing resources in a wireless multichannel broadband base station (BBS) for a cellular communications network including determining a number of available channel processor (CP) resources which are unused in a BBS. In response to notification of a subscriber call to be processed by a cell of the BBS, a determination is made as to whether the number of available CP resources is at least one. If so, then the call is assigned to any available CP resource in the BBS. Each of the CPs in the BBS process any of a plurality of traffic channels contained on any frequency channel assigned to the BBS. In addition, an apparatus for practicing the method is disclosed.

Method for dynamic allocation of wireless base station DSP resources

A method and system for improved backhaul efficiency dynamically assigns packet based backhaul channels in a cellular communications system which includes at least one wireless repeater and a base station. The method and system can perform packet based backhaul communications regardless of the translating repeater to mobile communications format used. The method and system can also use a single backhaul channel to transmit packets between multiple repeaters and the base station.

Packet based backhaul channel configuration for a wireless repeater

A method of frequency hopping is supported by a basestation having a broadband transceiver. The method permits changing physical channels upon which mobile subscribers communicate with the basestation, wherein the broadband transceiver is operated using static transceiver frequencies, the method exclusive of switching communication signals between transceivers. In one embodiment, the method maps baseband output signals from a digital channelizer which represent physical channels to ones of digital signal processors representing logical channels and baseband input signals of a digital combiner to ones of logical outputs of digital signal processors according to a mapping signal.

Method of baseband frequency hopping utilizing time division multiplexed mapping between a radio transceiver and digital signal processing resources

A sectorized wireless broadband base station (BBS) having two or more assigned absolute RF channel numbers (ARFCNs) for communications with mobile subscribers in a cellular communications network. The system includes a central processing unit for exclusively allocating one or more of the ARFCNs to each of the sectors, each sector providing a communication link for subscriber calls in one or more communication cells serviced by the BBS. Further, the system includes programming and hardware for exclusively allocating an additional one of the ARFCNs to the sector upon a number of the subscriber calls in any such sector reaching a predetermined limit which exceeds a capacity for the ARFCN.

Dynamic allocation of carrier frequencies in a wireless broadband base station

A method for dynamically allocating signal processing resources in a wireless multichannel broadband base station (BBS) for a cellular communications network. The method includes the steps of determining a number of available channel processor (CP) resources which are unused among a set of RF processing chain (RFP) resources allocated to a communications cell. Each RFP processes a single frequency channel and contains a plurality of CPs. The plurality of CPs process at least one of a plurality of traffic channels contained on said frequency channel. In response to notification of a subscriber call to be processed by the BBS, a determination is made as to whether the number of available CP resources is at least one. If so, the call is assigned to the available CP resource. In addition, an apparatus for performing the method is disclosed.

Method for dynamic allocation of wireless base station DSP resources with integrated rate converters

A wireless telephone architecture employs a broadband transceiver that is coupled to a digital channelizer and digital combiner, such as may employ a real-time Fast Fourier Transform, to extract or combine a set of simultaneous baseband signals. The baseband signals which represent physical channels are mapped to a bank of digital signal processors representing logical channels according to a mapping instituted at the initialization of the call. The mapping is changed on a periodic basis to follow a predetermined frequency hopping schedule. Frequency hopping is thus enabled in a statically tuned broadband transceiver.

Basestation architecture supporting baseband frequency hopping utilizing time division multiplexed mapping between a radio transceiver and digital signal processing resources

An apparatus for a cellular communications network including a broadband transceiver for providing upconversion and downconversion between an RF band-of-interest and an intermediate frequency (IF); a transmultiplexer (XMUX) interfacing with the transceiver. The XMUX demultiplexes a single wideband IF receive signal to form a set of individual frequency channels on a receive path of the transceiver, and multiplexes the frequency channels into a single wideband IF transmit signal on a transmit path. The BBS also includes a rate converter processor (RCP) that interfaces with the XMUX for converting at least one of the frequency channels from a first data rate of the XMUX to a second data rate, and a communications bus that transports the modulated IF signals for each of the frequency channels between the RCP and a plurality of channel processors (CP). Each CP processes any of a plurality of traffic channels contained on any of said IF signals. An alternative architecture for the apparatus is disclosed.

Broadband base station architecture for advanced resource management

A wireless communication system basestation making use of a wideband, multichannel digital transceiver having incorporated therein a time division multiple-access (TDM) bus for providing digital samples of a plurality of wireless communication channels, wherein the TDM bus is used as a cross-bar switch to permit dynamic allocation of modulator and demodulator signal processing resources. The invention allows various standards, even those having different channel bandwidths, to be serviced by the same basestation, with automatic redistributed of signal processing resources, eliminating the need to reconfigure the basestation when the loading of different types of wireless signaling traffic changes.

Wideband wireless base-station making use of time division

A wireless communication system basestation making use of a wideband, multichannel digital transceiver having incorporated therein a time division multiple-access (TDM) bus for providing digital samples of a plurality of wireless communication channels, wherein the time slot duration and frame rate of the TDM bus may be reconfigured. The invention allows various air interface standards, even those having different channel bandwidths, to be serviced by the same basestation, without having to install additional or different equipment, and by automatically redistributing signal processing resources, eliminating the need to reconfigure the basestation when different types of wireless signaling must be accommodated.

Wideband wireless base station making use of time division multiple

A boat propeller lock for boat propellers of the type that include a central shaft with a plurality of outward extending propeller blades, and that attach to the drive shaft of an outboard or inboard/outboard marine motor is provided. In one embodiment, the invention includes a generally U-shaped member consisting of a base member and a pair of parallel arms. A generally C-shaped member having a pair of parallel arms extending perpendicular to the C-shaped member, with one arm extending from each end of the 'C' of the C-shaped member. The U-shaped member being adapted so the base member fits the front portion of an outboard or inboard/outboard lower unit with the parallel arms facing aft of the lower unit, and the C-shaped member being positioned over the rear of the marine propeller with the parallel arms facing forward. The parallel arms of the U-shaped member being slidably engagable with the parallel arms of the C-shaped member. One of the members includes a locking portion that permits slidable engagement of the parallel arms, but prevents disengagement thereof unless the locking portion is unlocked. At least one of the parallel arms can include a plurality of longitudinally spaced ratchet teeth. The lock portion can include a pawl adapted to engage the rachet teeth to permit the U- and C-shaped members to be slid together while preventing the members from being pulled apart when in the locked position.

Propeller security device

A physically compact, multichannel wireless communication transceiver architecture employs overlap and add or polyphase signal processing functionality, previously applied to narrowband speech analysis research, for wideband signal processing. A receiver section receives a plurality of multiple frequency communication channels and outputs digital signals representative of the contents of the plurality of multiple frequency communication channels. The receiver section contains an FFT-based channelizer that processes the digital signals output by a wideband digital receiver and couples respective channel outputs to a first plurality of digital signal processor units, which process (e.g. demodulate) respective ones of the digital channel signals and supply processed ones of the digital channel signals at respective output ports for distribution to an attendant voice/data network. On the transmit side, a transmit section contains a plurality of digital signal processors, respectively associated with respective ones of a plurality of incoming (voice/data) communication signals to be transmitted over respectively different frequency channels. Their processed (modulated, encoded) outputs are supplied to an inverse FFT combiner. The FFT combiner supplies a combined multichannel signal to a wideband transmitter which transmits a multiple frequency communication channel signal. Each of the channelizer and combiner may be implemented using overlap and add or polyphase filtering.

Transceiver apparatus employing wideband FFT channelizer and inverse FFT

A channelizer (16) and combiner (22) in a cellular-telephone base station (10) are implemented in fast-Fourier-transform butterfly circuits (FIG. 4 ) in which outputs of adders (40, 46) are applied to successive adders (46, 50) in bit alignment. Although this makes it necessary for the input to the first adder (40) to leave some of the adder's input-port bit width unused in order to avoid the carries that a bit-aligned architecture cannot accommodate, the resultant accuracy exceeds that of a bit-offset architecture, because it can take advantage of rounding (56, 58) applied to each fast-Fourier-transform pass's input operands.

Improved-accuracy fast-Fourier-transform butterfly circuit

In a cellular-telephone-system base-station receiver's channelizer (111), frequency translation of the outputs of a filter bank (FIG. 5) implemented in fast-Fourier-transform circuitry (453,455,460) is achieved by rotating the correspondence between FFT input elements and the filter coefficients by which multipliers (437) multiply incoming samples to produce them. Specifically, a storage-address generator (482) directs that corresponding FFT input elements of successive FFT operations be stored in the same locations in an input-data memory (451). To retrieve those values for use in the DFT operation, however, a fetch-address generator (484) employs a modulo-K adder (488) to impose a changing offset so that the starting address for retrieval of each FFT operation's input record changes between FFT operations by the filter bank's decimation rate M. An FFT-implemented combiner (131) similarly rotates computation values to phase align successive wavelets that it adds together to generate modulated carriers in a multi-channel output signal.

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Melbourne, FL, United States of America

Terry L Williams