Patent ID: 7787823

Claim:
A radio-over-fiber (RoF) optical fiber cable system with transponder diversity for a RoF wireless picocellular system, the RoF optical fiber cable system comprising: at least one optical fiber cable; two or more transponders optically supported by the at least one optical fiber cable, wherein the two or more transponders are arranged to form one or more groups of two or more proximately located transponders, wherein the transponders in a given transponder group are adapted to be sufficiently proximately located to one another to form corresponding two or more co-located picocells for the given transponder group, such that if one of the transponders in the given transponder group is unable to provide service for an area corresponding to a picocell for the given transponder group, another transponder in the given transponder group is adapted to provide continuing service for the area corresponding to the picocell for the given transponder group; a diversity combiner optically coupled to each transponder and adapted to determine respective signal strengths from each transponder in each transponder group so as to ensure the transponder with the greatest signal strength in a given transponder group is used to form the picocell for the given transponder group.