Open radio access network with unified remote units supporting multiple functional splits, multiple wireless interface protocols, multiple generations of radio access technology, and multiple radio frequency bands

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-12082003-B2
Application number	US-202117362344-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 29, 2021
Priority date	Jun 30, 2020
Publication date	Sep 3, 2024
Grant date	Sep 3, 2024

Abstract

One embodiment is directed to an open radio access network to provide wireless coverage for a plurality of cells at a site and that comprises a virtualized headend comprising one or more base-station nodes and a plurality of unified remote units deployed at the site. Each of the unified remote units is able to support multiple functional splits, multiple wireless interface protocols, multiple generations of radio access technology, and multiple frequency bands. The unified remote units and functional split used to serve each cell can be changed (for example, on-the-fly as a part of an automatic or manual adaptation process that is a function of one or more monitored performance attributes of the open radio access network such as network bandwidth, network latency, processing load, or processing performance). The unified remote units can be implemented in a modular manner with a backplane to which different radio modules can be coupled.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. An open radio access network to provide wireless coverage for a plurality of cells at a site, the open radio access network comprising:
a virtualized headend comprising one or more base-station nodes; and
a plurality of unified remote units deployed at the site, each of which is associated with one or more antennas to wirelessly transmit and receive downlink and uplink radio frequency (RF) signals to and from user equipment;
wherein the plurality of unified remote units is configured to communicate with the one or more base-station nodes using a switched Ethernet network; and
wherein each unified remote unit comprises multiple downlink processing signal paths, multiple uplink processing signal paths, multiple downlink radio signal paths, and multiple uplink radio signal paths configured to support multiple fronthaul splits, multiple wireless interface protocols, multiple generations of radio access technology, and multiple frequency bands.

2. The open radio access network of claim 1 , wherein, for each of at least some cells served by the open radio access network using a respective functional split, a respective wireless interface protocol, and a respective frequency band:
the virtualized headend comprises a respective one or more base-station nodes to serve that cell;
a respective one or more unified remote units are used to serve that cell;
the respective one or more base-station nodes serving that cell are configured to:
perform processing, in accordance with the respective functional split, the respective wireless interface protocol, and the respective frequency band used for that cell, to generate respective digital downlink fronthaul data for that cell;
send, over the switched Ethernet network, the respective digital downlink fronthaul data to the respective one or more of the unified remote units serving that cell;

each of the respective one or more unified remote units serving that cell are configured to:
receive, from the switched Ethernet network, the respective digital downlink fronthaul data for that cell;
perform processing, in accordance with the respective functional split, the respective wireless interface protocol, and the respective frequency band used for that cell, of the respective digital downlink fronthaul data for that cell to generate respective downlink analog RF signals for that cell; and
wirelessly transmit the respective downlink analog RF signals for that cell from the antennas used associated with that unified remote unit;

each of the respective one or more unified remote units used to serve that cell are configured to:
wirelessly receive respective uplink analog RF signals for that cell via the antennas associated with that unified remote unit;
perform processing, in accordance with the respective functional split, the respective wireless interface protocol, and the respective frequency band used for that cell, of the respective uplink analog RF signals to generate respective digital uplink fronthaul data for that cell;
send, over the switched Ethernet network, the respective digital uplink fronthaul data for that cell to the one or more base-station nodes used to serve that cell; and

the respective one or more base-station nodes serving that cell are configured to:
receive, from the switched Ethernet network, the respective digital uplink fronthaul data for that cell;
perform processing, in accordance with the respective functional split, the respective wireless interface protocol, and the respective frequency band used for that cell, of the respective digital uplink fronthaul data for that cell.

3. The open radio access network of claim 1 , wherein at least one of the unified remote units is configured to:
serve a first cell using a first functional split; and
serve a second cell using a second functional split; and
wherein the first functional split differs from the second functional split.

4. The open radio access network of claim 1 , wherein at least one of the unified remote units is configured to:
serve a first cell using a first wireless interface protocol; and
serve a second cell using a second wireless interface protocol; and
wherein the first wireless interface protocol differs from the second wireless interface protocol.

5. The open radio access network of claim 1 , wherein at least one of the unified remote units is configured to:
serve a first cell using a first frequency band; and
serve a second cell using a second frequency band; and
wherein the first frequency band differs from the second frequency band.

6. The open radio access network of claim 1 , wherein each of the unified remote units comprises:
a plurality of downlink multi-protocol modules, each of which including a plurality of the downlink processing signal paths;
a plurality of uplink multi-protocol modules, each of which including a plurality of the uplink processing signal paths;
a plurality of downlink radio modules, each of which including at least one of the downlink radio signal paths;
a plurality of uplink radio modules, each of which including at least one of the uplink radio signal paths;
a downlink in-phase and quadrature (IQ) stream switch to couple each downlink radio signal path to a respective one or more downlink processing signal paths;
an uplink in-phase and quadrature (IQ) stream switch to couple each uplink processing signal path to a respective one or more uplink radio signal paths;
control-plane functionality to process control-plane communications;
management-plane functionality to process management-plane communications; and
synchronization-plane functionality to process synchronization-plane communications in order to synchronize that unified remote unit to a master time base for the open radio access network.

7. The open radio access network of claim 1 , wherein one or more base-station nodes used to serve at least one cell comprises:
a baseband unit (BBU);
a remote radio head (RRH) coupled to the BBU and configured to transmit downlink analog RF signals and receive uplink analog RF signals for the cell;
an Internet Protocol (IP) transceiver configured to:
receive the downlink analog RF signals, digitize the downlink analog RF signals to produce downlink digital data, produce IP packets for sending over the switched Ethernet network to the respective one or more of the unified remote units serving that cell; and
receive IP packets sent over the switched Ethernet network from the respective one or more of the unified remote units serving that cell, extract uplink digital data from the IP packets, convert the uplink digital data to the uplink analog RF signals, and provide the uplink analog RF signals to the RRH.

8. The open radio access network of claim 7 , wherein the BBU and the RRH are configured to use at least one of the following front-haul interfaces: a Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI), an evolved Common Public Radio Interface (eCPRI), an Open Radio Equipment Interface (ORI), or an Open Base Station Standard Initiative (OBSAI) interface.

9. The open radio access network of claim 1 , wherein one or more base-station nodes used to serve at least one cell comprises:
an Open Radio Access Network Alliance (O-RAN) distributed unit (DU) that is configured to:
perform at least some processing to generate respective digital downlink user-plane and control-plane fronthaul data for that cell and send, over the switched Ethernet network, the respective digital downlink user-plane and control-plane fronthaul data to the respective one or more of the unified remote units serving that cell; and
receive, from the switched Ethernet network, respective digital uplink user-plane and control-plane fronthaul data for that ce

Assignees

• Commscope Technologies Llc

Inventors

• Dussmann Alfons
• Stefanik Joerg
• Braun Patrick
• Schwab Daniel
• Hanson Van Erick
• Sriram Suresh Natarajan
• Kummetz Thomas
• Zavadsky Dean

Classifications

• H04W72/0453

  Resources in frequency domain, e.g. a carrier in FDMA · CPC title

• H04W24/08

  Testing, {supervising or monitoring} using real traffic · CPC title

• H04W88/10

  adapted for operation in multiple networks, e.g. multi-mode access points · CPC title

• H04W28/0236

  radio quality, e.g. interference, losses or delay · CPC title

• H04W28/0231

  based on communication conditions (dynamic wireless traffic scheduling definition based on channel quality criteria H04W72/54) · CPC title