Patent ID: 8311023

Claim:
An intelligent backhaul radio comprising: one or more demodulator cores, wherein each demodulator core demodulates one or more receive symbol streams to produce a respective receive data interface stream, a plurality of receive radio frequency (RF) chains to convert from a plurality of receive RF signals to a plurality of respective receive chain output signals; a frequency selective receive path channel multiplexer, interposed between the one or more demodulator cores and the plurality of receive RF chains, to produce the one or more receive symbol streams provided to the one or more demodulator cores from the plurality of receive chain output signals; one or more modulator cores, wherein each modulator core modulates a respective transmit data interface stream to produce one or more transmit symbol streams; a plurality of transmit RF chains to convert from a plurality of transmit chain input signals to a plurality of respective transmit RF signals; a transmit path channel multiplexer, interposed between the one or more modulator cores and the plurality of transmit RF chains, to produce the plurality of transmit chain input signals provided to the plurality of transmit RF chains from the one or more transmit symbol streams; an antenna array comprising: a plurality of directive gain antenna elements; one or more selectable RF connections that selectively couple certain of the plurality of directive gain antenna elements to certain of the plurality of receive RF chains, wherein the number of directive gain antenna elements that can be selectively coupled to receive RF chains exceeds the number of receive RF chains that can accept receive RF signals from the one or more selectable RF connections; and a plurality of RF connections to couple at least certain of the plurality of directive gain antenna elements to the plurality of transmit RF chains; a radio resource controller, wherein the radio resource controller sets or causes to be set the specific selective couplings between the certain of the plurality of directive gain antenna elements and the certain of the plurality of receive RF chains; an interface bridge configured to couple the intelligent backhaul radio to a data network, the interface bridge comprising one or more Ethernet interfaces to couple the interface bridge to the data network, the interface bridge multiplexing and buffering the one or more Ethernet interfaces; a media access controller to exchange data to and from the data network via coupling to at least the interface bridge and to and from at least one other intelligent backhaul radio; and a radio link controller, wherein the radio link controller sets or causes to be set certain modulation mapping or forward error correction encoding parameters for the one or more modulator cores.