Patent ID: 8355408

Claim:
A front-end system for a communication system comprising: a plurality of analogue blocks arranged for transmitting and receiving analogue signals; and a digital unidirectional circular network operative for controlling and monitoring the operation of at least one analogue block of the plurality of analogue blocks, the digital unidirectional circular network arranged for implementing a logical packet-based communication scheme, the digital unidirectional circular network comprising: a digital master node configured to send a data packet; and a plurality of digital slave nodes, wherein each slave node is connected to one analogue block of the plurality of analogue blocks, each slave node comprising interface circuitry for controlling and monitoring the connected analogue block and at least a first configuration register, and each of the digital slave nodes being configured to: receive a first data packet from the digital master node, the first data packet comprising a first configuration; store the first configuration in the first configuration register; after storing the first configuration, receive an activation command from digital unidirectional circular network; identify whether the activation command is addressed to the digital slave node; in response to identifying that the activation command is addressed to the digital slave node, retrieve the first configuration from the first configuration register, and configure the connected analogue block using the first configuration, wherein parameters for communication over the digital unidirectional circular network are selected to substantially minimize interference among the plurality of the analogue blocks by balancing clock propagation delay and data propagation delay in each node of the plurality of digital slave nodes by use of a clock activity profile that ramps up over time determined by the sequential activation order for the analogue blocks as required for a particular system functionality.