Patent ID: 8606255

Claim:
A distributed radio base station comprising: a first distributed portion of the radio base station; a second distributed portion of the radio base station; a parallel communications link connected between the first distributed portion and the second distributed portion; a first universal asynchronous receiver transmitter situated at one of the distributed portions, the first universal asynchronous receiver transmitter being connected to a first asynchronous serial communications link; a first internal interface connected between the first universal asynchronous receiver transmitter and the parallel communications link; a second universal asynchronous receiver transmitter situated at another of the distributed portions, the second universal asynchronous receiver transmitter being connected to a second asynchronous serial communications link; and a second internal interface connected between the second universal asynchronous receiver transmitter and the parallel communications link; wherein the first universal asynchronous receiver transmitter is configured to insert, in a control word transmitted on the parallel communications link, an indicator of a serial data baud rate of data asynchronously received by the first universal asynchronous receiver transmitter, and wherein the second universal asynchronous receiver transmitter is configured to obtain the indicator of the serial data baud rate from the control word and to set a data transmission rate of the second universal asynchronous receiver transmitter for transmission of data on the second asynchronous serial link in accordance with the indicator, wherein the indicator comprises a multi-bit portion of the control word, and wherein different combinations of bit values for the multi-bit portion of the control word correspond to different serial baud rate values.