Patent ID: 8705634

Claim:
A base transceiver system, comprising: a base station processor, an RF unit, and a data transfer link between the base station processor and the RF unit; the RF unit being connected to the data transfer link, and to an antenna to receive an analog uplink signal having one or more carriers, the RF unit being configured to translate each of said one or more carriers from the analog uplink signal into one or more uplink digital baseband antenna-carrier channels, each uplink digital baseband antenna-carrier channel having a sequence of uplink signal samples that are sent to the data transfer link, wherein each uplink signal sample includes an in-phase (I) sample and a quadrature (Q) sample, and the RF unit also being configured to translate one or more downlink digital baseband antenna-carrier channels received from the data transfer link and having a sequence of downlink signal samples, wherein each downlink signal sample includes an in-phase (I) sample and a quadrature (Q) sample, into an analog downlink signal having one or more carriers for transmission by an antenna; the base station processor being connected to the data transfer link, and including a communication interface adapted for connection to a source of downlink signals, and to a destination for uplink signals, the base station processor being configured to translate the downlink signal from the communications interface to one or more downlink digital baseband antenna-carrier channels and having a sequence of downlink signal samples, wherein each downlink signal sample includes an in-phase (I) sample and a quadrature (Q) sample, and to transmit the sequence of downlink digital baseband antenna-carrier channels across the data transfer link to the RF unit, and to process one or more uplink digital baseband antenna-carrier channels received from the RF unit across the data transfer link to produce uplink data for delivery across the communications interface; and further including compression and decompression logic at the RF unit and at the base station processor arranged for transfer of compressed versions of the uplink and downlink digital baseband antenna-carrier channels across the data transfer link.