In recent years, communication technologies, especially the mobile communication technologies, have been developing fast. With the development of the first generation, second generation, and third generation (3G) mobile communication systems, mobile communications impose more and more impacts on people's life and work. At present, as the number of mobile subscribers increases continuously and mobile services are increasingly diversified, mobile operators all over the world attempt to attract and win mobile subscribers by fast providing new-mode services, to gain a competitive edge in the expanding market.
Two solutions in the prior art are available to implement new-mode services.
The first solution is to adopt the original mode and add new-mode base stations. Thus, an overlay communication network is formed to provide different mobile services for subscribers. In this solution, however, to construct such an overlay communication network, mobile operators need to invest an enormous sum of money, especially in the capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operation expenditure (OPEX), for equipment purchase, site acquisition, site construction, and network operation and maintenance.
The second solution is to install old-mode modules and new-mode modules in the same cabinet to implement multi-mode base stations, that is, to insert the baseband boards of different modes into the same baseband subrack in a base station. For example, the baseband boards of different radio air interface modes such as the global system for mobile communications (GSM), wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA), and code division multiple access 2000 (CDMA2000) are inserted to form a multi-mode base station. The implementation method is to allocate fixed slots for the baseband boards of different modes in advance. For example, allocate slots 1 to 4 for the WCDMA baseband boards and slots 5 to 8 for the GSM baseband boards. Compared with the first solution, the second solution saves sites and cabinets.
In the second solution, the existing equipment and air interface resources may be reused. Thus, in the radio access field, radio network operators need to use the base stations that support multiple radio access technologies, that is, multi-mode base stations.
In general, radio resource parameters need to be configured for single-mode base stations, while multiple radio resources and the radio access modes that the base stations adopt need to be configured for multi-mode base stations. That is, the multi-mode base station has one more configuration dimension than the single-mode base station and thus the configuration workload of the multi-mode base station increases. In general, a multi-mode base station is made up of multiple single-mode base stations that are simply stacked together, and the configuration process is also a combination of the configuration processes of multiple single-mode base stations. Different configuration files are used in the same base station. How to use these configurations is decided by working personnel.
To enable a base station to support a new mode, working personnel need to download the software related to the mode to the base station. When it is necessary to change a mode or adjust the percentage of modes in a multi-mode base station, the configuration files must be delivered again, which makes the operations more complex.
In addition, the configuration files are relatively static and are used for specific equipment modules. During mode change or adjustment, relevant software needs to be manually downloaded and the configuration files need to be manually delivered, which is complex.