Patent ID: 8331461

Claim:
A radio for transmitting and receiving an RF signal including a plurality of antenna-carrier channels, comprising: an interface for a bi-directional serial data channel carrying serial data streams including corresponding incoming and outgoing sequences of data structures, at least some of the data structures in the sequence holding compressed in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) signal samples for a plurality of baseband antenna-carrier channels of a wireless communication network; logic coupled to assemble the outgoing sequences of data structures from a plurality of sequences of compressed I and Q signal samples corresponding to the plurality of baseband antenna-carrier channels, and to disassemble the incoming sequences of data structures, to recover a plurality of sequences of compressed I and Q signal samples corresponding to the plurality of baseband antenna-carrier channels; and compression and decompression logic arranged to compress I and Q signal samples of the plurality of baseband antenna-carrier channels to provide the outgoing sequences of compressed I and Q signal samples, and arranged to decompress the incoming sequences of compressed I and Q signal samples to provide decompressed I and Q signal samples of the plurality of baseband antenna-carrier channels; an upconverter arranged to upconvert the incoming sequences of decompressed I and Q signal samples for the respective baseband antenna-carrier channels to form digital samples of a plurality of antenna-carrier channels; a downconverter arranged to downconvert digital samples of a received RF signal to produce I and Q signal samples of the plurality of baseband antenna-carrier channels; and a transducer arranged to convert the digital samples of the plurality of antenna-carrier channels to an analog RF signal, and to convert the received analog RF signal to the digital samples of antenna-carrier channels.