Patent ID: 8155680

Claim:
A method of providing a frequency reference to a mobile telecommunications base station, comprising: if a macro-cell base station beacon channel is detected by a small scale base station, then wirelessly receiving, at a small scale base station from a macro-cell base station, a radio frequency signal that includes a periodic component having a known frequency; deriving, at the small scale base station, from the received radio signal, based at least in part on the periodic component, a frequency reference; using, by the small scale base station, the frequency reference to transmit from the small scale base station to a mobile station at an assigned frequency; and if the macro-cell base station beacon channel is not detected by the small scale base station, then using an existing IP connection of the small scale base station to receive a backup frequency reference that is used by the small scale base station to communicate with the mobile station, the existing IP connection of the small scale base station connecting to an aggregated gateway through an IP network, the aggregated gateway connecting to a base station controller through a dedicated connection, the aggregated gateway serving a plurality of small scale base stations, wherein the aggregated gateway aggregates the periodic components disposed in a same timeslot of a plurality of TDMA frames in a multiframe control channel format, and, during the aggregating, adjusting, based on another periodic component of the radio frequency signal, time gate boundaries used in the aggregating.