Patent ID: 8649748

Claim:
A method of dynamically configuring a set of multi-carrier power amplifiers, MCPAs, to provide power amplification for a set of base station transmitters, said method comprising: dynamically determining required transmit powers of the transmitters and available transmit powers of the MCPAs; dynamically mapping the required transmit powers of the transmitters to the available transmit powers of the MCPAs, by mapping the required transmit power of a first transmitter to the available transmit power of a first MCPA, and mapping the required transmit power of a second transmitter to the available transmit power of a second MCPA, without also mapping the required transmit power of the second transmitter to the available transmit power of the first MCPA, wherein the first MCPA is different from the second MCPA and the first transmitter is different than the second transmitter, wherein dynamically mapping the required transmit powers of the transmitters to the available transmit powers of the MCPAs comprises minimizing the number of MCPAs needed to support an aggregate required transmit power of the transmitters, based on distributing the required transmit powers of individual transmitters between two or more of the MCPAs, as needed; and controlling the MCPAs to provide the required transmit powers according to the dynamic mapping.