Patent ID: 8649684

Claim:
A wireless communication system, comprising: communication components, comprising: a downlink base transceiver station (BTS) interface configured to receive downlink electrical radio frequency (RF) signals from at least one BTS on at least one communication downlink; at least one optical interface module (OIM) configured to: receive and convert the downlink electrical RF signals from the downlink BTS interface into downlink Radio-over-Fiber (RoF) signals on the at least one communication downlink; and receive and convert uplink RoF signals from at least one remote antenna unit (RAU) into uplink electrical RF signals on at least one communication uplink; an uplink BTS interface configured to receive and communicate the uplink electrical RF signals from the at least one communication uplink to the at least one BTS; and a controller configured to execute software to communicate communication operations to the communication components over a communication bus comprising the at least one communication downlink without interruption of the downlink electrical RF signals and downlink RoF signals on the at least one communication downlink, wherein the controller is configured to discover the presence at least one of the communication components and to periodically rediscover the presence at least one of the communication components to ensure that the at least one of the communication components are operational, the controller is configured to enumerate point information from the at least one of the communication components discovered, and the communications operations comprise the controller configured to receive at least one point from at least one of the communication components and wherein the at least one point includes an identity of the communication component and a point identification (ID), and wherein the controller is configured to receive flagbits to provide characteristic information regarding the at least one point.