Patent ID: 7474635

Claim:
A method for use in a communication system, comprising the steps of: receiving multiple uplink beams that comprise multiple frequency division multiplexed (FDM) carriers at a communication node; characterized by the steps of: separating the multiple FDM carriers by frequency to obtain multiple separated carriers; translating each separated carrier of the multiple separated carriers to a common intermediate frequency and converting each separated carrier of the multiple separated carriers to a digital signal without demodulating the multiple FDM carriers; storing each digital signal into a buffer memory arranged in data blocks without demodulating the multiple FDM carriers; retrieving one or more of the data blocks in a selected sequence to obtain a sequence of data blocks as a time division multiplexed (TDM) digital signal; converting the TDM digital signal into a TDM analog signal; and transmitting the TDM analog signal as a downlink beam.