1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates generally to a wireless communication system base station and, more particularly, to a base station having reconfigurable transceivers.
2. Description of the Related Art
An effective wireless communication network requires a large number of base stations to provide adequate coverage over a desired geographic area. For coverage in a metropolitan area, base stations may be located on the rooftop of buildings. For coverage of the larger geographic area, such as nationwide coverage, a large number of base stations are constructed with base station towers.
In early base station designs, the antennas were mounted on the top portion of the tower and all of the associated electrical circuitry was located at the bottom of the tower, usually in a building to provide shelter. The shelter includes the radio frequency (RF) transmitters and receivers as well as environmental control battery back-up systems, and the like. The transmitters and receivers on the ground were coupled to the antenna systems at the top of the tower by large diameter RF coaxial cables. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the cable losses using coaxial cable can be as much as 3 dB thus reducing power by 50%.
These early base station designs have been updated to use a remote radio head (RRH) mounted on top of the tower in close proximity to the antenna system. The greatly reduced length of coaxial cable avoids the signal losses described above. In this arrangement, all radio frequency (RF) circuitry is located atop the base station tower. Electrical circuitry in the form of baseband modems is located at the bottom of the tower. In a typical arrangement, the baseband modems are coupled to the RRH via a fiber optic cable. The optical fiber provides wide bandwidth connectivity with virtually no signal loss.
The disadvantage of existing systems is their lack of flexibility and remote programmability. The present disclosure is directed to a base station system that is reconfigurable to accommodate changes in operational modes and the ability to adapt to changes in traffic density. The present disclosure provides this and other advantages as will be apparent from the following detailed description and the accompanying figures.