Digital wireless distributed communications system (WDCS) employing a centralized spectrum chunk construction of communications channels for distribution to remote units to reduce transmission data rates

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10819477-B2
Application number	US-201916374441-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Apr 3, 2019
Priority date	Oct 7, 2016
Publication date	Oct 27, 2020
Grant date	Oct 27, 2020

Abstract

Digital wireless distributed communications systems (WDCS) employing a centralized spectrum chunk construction of communications channels for distribution to remote units are disclosed. Individual, discrete communications channels received from one or more signal sources are centrally constructed into spectrum chunks before being distributed to remote units. When the communications channels are constructed into spectrum chunks, the individual communications channels are positioned in their respective defined center radio frequency (RF) frequencies of their respective communications band before being distributed to the remote units. Thus, the remote units do not have to include the additional cost and associated power consumption of processing circuitry to construct the communications bands for individual communications channels. The remote units can up-convert the received spectrum chunks, which have already been centrally band constructed, to their respective frequencies according to their communication band(s).

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A central unit in a digital wireless distributed communications system (WDCS), comprising:
a plurality of downlink input interfaces each configured to receive a downlink digital communications channel among a plurality of downlink digital communications channels, from a signal source among a plurality of signal sources;
a plurality of digital up-converter (DUC) circuits each configured to:
receive a respective downlink digital communications channel among the plurality of downlink digital communications channels;
interpolate the downlink digital communications channel to a defined sample rate for a target bandwidth of a downlink spectrum chunk of one or more downlink spectrum chunks into an interpolated downlink digital communications channel; and
frequency up-shift the interpolated downlink digital communications channel at a defined position in the downlink spectrum chunk of the one or more downlink spectrum chunks;

a downlink routing circuit configured to receive the interpolated downlink digital communications channels interpolated by the plurality of DUC circuits and route each of the interpolated downlink digital communications channels each corresponding to a downlink spectrum chunk of the one or more downlink spectrum chunks to one or more downlink routing output ports among a plurality of downlink routing output ports based on a downlink routing map;
at least one data stream (DS) construction circuit configured to combine the one or more downlink spectrum chunks routed to the one or more downlink routing output ports, into one or more downlink spectrum chunk streams; and
at least one downlink output interface coupled to at least one communications medium communicatively coupled to at least one remote unit among a plurality of remote units, the at least one downlink output interface configured to distribute the one or more downlink spectrum chunk streams to the at least one remote unit.

2. The central unit of claim 1 , wherein at least one downlink input interface among the plurality of downlink input interfaces is configured to receive the downlink digital communications channel from a digital signal source.

3. The central unit of claim 2 , wherein the at least one downlink input interface among the plurality of downlink input interfaces is configured to receive a downlink digital baseband communications channel from a baseband digital signal source.

4. The central unit of claim 3 , wherein the at least one downlink input interface among the plurality of downlink input interfaces comprises at least one common public radio interface (CPRI) protocol interface.

5. The central unit of claim 1 , wherein at least one downlink input interface among the plurality of downlink input interfaces is configured to receive a downlink analog communications channel, and further comprising:
at least one analog-to-digital converter (ADC) circuit configured to convert the downlink analog communications channel into the downlink digital communications channel.

6. The central unit of claim 1 , further comprising a control circuit configured to control a first set of DUC circuits among the plurality of DUC circuits to frequency up-shift a first set of downlink digital communications channels among the plurality of downlink communications channels corresponding to a first communications band, into a first set of interpolated downlink digital communications channels in first defined, non-overlapping frequency channel bands of a first downlink spectrum chunk of the one or more downlink spectrum chunks, the first downlink spectrum chunk having a first frequency bandwidth.

7. The central unit of claim 6 , wherein the control circuit is configured to control a second set of DUC circuits among the plurality of DUC circuits to frequency up-shift a second set of downlink digital communications channels among the plurality of downlink communications channels corresponding to a second communications band, into a second set of interpolated downlink digital communications channels in second defined, non-overlapping frequency channel bands of a second downlink spectrum chunk of the one or more downlink spectrum chunks, the second downlink spectrum chunk having a second frequency bandwidth.

8. The central unit of claim 7 , wherein the first frequency bandwidth of the first downlink spectrum chunk does not overlap the second frequency bandwidth of the second downlink spectrum chunk.

9. The central unit of claim 7 , further comprising one or more downlink channel combining circuits each configured to combine the one or more downlink spectrum chunks routed to the one or more downlink routing output ports into a downlink spectrum chunk of the one or more downlink spectrum chunks;
the at least one DS construction circuit configured to merge the one or more downlink spectrum chunks into a downlink spectrum chunk stream of the one or more downlink spectrum chunk streams.

10. The central unit of claim 1 , further comprising at least one downlink conditioning circuit each communicatively coupled to a respective downlink routing output port among the plurality of downlink routing output ports, the at least one downlink conditioning circuit configured to condition a signal attribute of an interpolated downlink digital communications channel received from the respective downlink routing output port.

11. The central unit of claim 10 , wherein the at least one downlink conditioning circuit is configured to condition the signal attribute of the interpolated downlink digital communications channel by being configured to increase a magnitude of the interpolated downlink digital communications channel.

12. The central unit of claim 10 , wherein the at least one downlink conditioning circuit is configured to condition the signal attribute of the interpolated downlink digital communications channel by being configured to decrease a magnitude of the interpolated downlink digital communications channel.

13. The central unit of claim 1 , further comprising:
a plurality of uplink input interfaces each coupled to the at least one communications medium, the plurality of uplink input interfaces each configured to receive at least one uplink input digital communications signal comprising a plurality of uplink spectrum chunk streams from at least one remote unit;
a plurality of DS deconstruction circuits each configured to unmerge at least one uplink spectrum chunk stream of the plurality of uplink spectrum chunk streams into one or more uplink spectrum chunks;
an uplink routing circuit configured to receive and route the one or more uplink spectrum chunks from the plurality of DS deconstruction circuits to a plurality of uplink routing output ports based on an uplink routing map;
one or more uplink spectrum chunk combining circuits each configured to combine the one or more uplink spectrum chunks for a communications channel into an uplink spectrum chunk stream at a defined frequency channel band;
at least one digital down-conversion (DDC) circuit configured to receive and frequency down-shift the uplink spectrum chunk stream into one or more frequency down-shifted uplink digital communications channels; and
at least one uplink output interface configured to receive and distribute the one or more frequency down-shifted uplink digital communications channels to a signal source among a plurality of signal sources.

14. The central unit of claim 13 , further comprising a plurality of uplink conditioning circuits each communicatively coupled to a respective uplink routing output port among the plurality of uplink routing output ports, the plurality of uplink conditioni

Assignees

• Corning Optical Communications LLC

Inventors

• Harel Dror
• Mizrahi Gavriel

Classifications

• H04W88/085

  Access point devices with remote components · CPC title

• H04L5/0042 Primary

  Intra-user or intra-terminal allocation · CPC title

• H04L5/0064

  Rate requirement of the data, e.g. scalable bandwidth, data priority · CPC title

• H04L5/0023

  Time-frequency-space · CPC title

• H04L5/0044

  Allocation of payload; Allocation of data channels, e.g. PDSCH or PUSCH · CPC title