ACTIVE ANTENNA SYSTEM

• US 20160329631A1
• Filed: 12/30/2014
• Published: 11/10/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 12/30/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Pegasus Telecom Holding GmbH
• Original Assignee: PATEV Associates GmbH, Tobias Sorg
• Inventors: Hfele, Edelbert, Tauber, Michael, Rheinfelder, Clemens
• Granted Patent: US 10,283,848 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H01Q 1/246 specially adapted for base stations
• CPC Class Codes: H01Q 21/0025 Modular arrays
• CPC Class Codes: H01Q 3/2605 Array of radiating elements provided with a feedback control over the element weights, e.g. adaptive arrays
• CPC Class Codes: H01Q 3/34 by electrical means active lenses or reflecting arrays H01Q3/46
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 1/40 Circuits
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 1/62 for providing a predistortion of the signal in the transmitter and corresponding correction in the receiver, e.g. for improving the signal/noise ratio
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 17/12 of transmit antennas, e.g. of the amplitude or phase
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 17/21 for calibration; for correcting measurements
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 7/04 using two or more spaced independent antennas
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/106 using time related information in packets, e.g. by adding timestamps

Abstract

The object of the present invention is to provide an active antenna system which is flexibly configurable and efficient in operation. According to a first aspect of the present invention an active antenna system comprises a radio equipment having a plurality of transceiver modules, each transceiver module being connected to at least one antenna, and a radio equipment control unit having a hub being connected to the transceiver modules via an antenna interconnect. The hub is embodied for receiving base band signals via the antenna interconnect from the transceiver modules and to extract channel signals from the received base band signals. As the hub is arranged in the radio equipment control unit which is part of a base station the base band signals are transmitted to the radio equipment control unit without extracting the channel signals. This allows easily to distribute the base band signals on several data connections, particularly several antenna cables, of one antenna interconnect. This results in a reduced information loss and minimizes the requirements for the transmission capacity of a single data connection of the antenna interconnect between the radio equipment control unit and the radio equipment. The radio equipment control unit does receive all the information which is originally received by the transceiver modules.

Claims

1. Active antenna system comprising

a radio equipment having a plurality of transceiver modules, each transceiver module being connected to at least one antenna,

a radio equipment control unit having a hub being connected to the transceiver modules via an antenna interconnect,

wherein the hub is embodied for receiving base band signals via the antenna interconnect from the transceiver modules and to extract channel signals from the received base band signals.

2. Active antenna system, according to claim 1, comprising

a radio equipment comprising a plurality of transceiver modules, each transceiver module being connected to at least one antenna,

a radio equipment control unit,

wherein each transceiver module comprises a switch matrix being connected to the radio equipment control unit via an antenna interconnect.

3. Active antenna system according to claim 1,

wherein the antenna interconnect comprises antenna cables for connecting the transceiver modules with the radio equipment control unit or wherein the antenna interconnect is a radio connect.

4. Active antenna system according to claim 3,

wherein the antenna cables are embodied as glass-fiber cables, wherein the data signals are transmitted in one color or in multiple colors (DWDM).

5. Active antenna system according to claim 3,

wherein the antenna cables are embodied as conducting wires, glass-fiber cables,

wherein the data signals are transmitted in one color or in multiple colors (DWDM).

6. Active antenna system according to claim 2, wherein the antenna interconnect is embodied for a serial data transmission, particularly as a serial data bus.

7. Active antenna system according to claim 1,

wherein the radio equipment comprises an up-converter for converting a base band signal to a high frequency RF antenna signal for transmitting the antenna signal via the corresponding antenna, and a down-converter for converting a received high frequency RF antenna signal to a base band signal.

8. Active antenna system according to claim 1,

wherein the radio equipment comprises a digital-to-analog converter for converting a digital signal received from the radio equipment control unit into an analog signal, and an analog-to-digital converter for converting an analog signal received by the antenna into a digital signal, wherein preferably digital signals are transmitted via the antenna interconnect.

9. Active antenna system according to claim 8,

wherein the digital signals of or for several antennas are jointly compressed.

10. Active antenna system according to claim 9,

wherein the jointly compressed digital signals are beamforming signals.

11. Active antenna system, according to claim 1, comprising

a plurality of antennas,

a radio equipment connected to the antennas and being located adjacent to the antennas,

wherein the radio equipment comprises for each antenna a separate transceiver module.

12. Active antenna system according to claim 11,

wherein a radio equipment control unit is connected to the radio equipment by an antenna interconnect.

13. Active antenna system according to claim 11,

wherein an up-converter for converting a base band signal to a high frequency RF antenna signal for transmitting the antenna signal via the corresponding antenna, and a down-converter for converting a received high frequency RF antenna signal to a base band signal.

14. Active antenna system according to claim 1, wherein

the radio Equipment comprises a digital-to-analog converter for converting a digital signal received from the radio equipment control unit into an analog signal, and

the radio Equipment comprises an analog-to-digital converter for converting an analog signal received by the antenna into a digital signal.

15. Active antenna system according to claim 14, wherein digital signals are transmitted via the antenna interconnect, wherein the digital signals of or for several antennas are jointly compressed.

16. Active antenna system according to claim 15, wherein

the jointly compressed digital signals are beamforming signals.

23. Active antenna system according to claim 1, wherein

the transceiver module comprises a predistortion unit.

24. Active antenna system according to claim 1, wherein

the transceiver module comprises a calibration unit.

28. Active antenna system according to claim 1, wherein

the transceiver module comprises an IQ-compensation module for compensating an IQ-imbalance, wherein preferably the IQ-compensation module is located in an receiving path and the receiving path comprises also homodyne receiver and the output side of the homodyne receiver is connected to said IQ-compensation module and the output side of the homodyne receiver is further connected to an IQ-coefficient determination module for determining IQ-imbalance coefficients (g₀, g₁, g₂, . . . ) and the IQ-coefficient determination module is connected to the input side of a transmission path for receiving a complex, time-depending amplitude, and the IQ-coefficient determination module is connected to the IQ-compensation module for providing the IQ-imbalance coefficients (g₀, g₁, g₂, . . . ) to the IQ-compensation module.

35. Active antenna system, particularly according to claim 1,

wherein each antenna module comprises a separate clock, wherein the individual clocks of the antenna modules can communicate with each other and one of said clocks is configured as a master clock and the other clocks are configured as slave clocks, wherein this master clock sends a clock signal to the slave clocks and the clock signal comprises a time stamp, so that the slave clocks receive the clock signals from the master clock together with the time stamp and calibrate their clocks according to the time difference between the time stamp and the time when the slave clock received the clock signal from the master clock, wherein the time difference can be determined either by iteratively returning the clock signals from the slave clocks to the master clock.

17-22. -22. (canceled)

25-27. -27. (canceled)

29. Active antenna system comprising

a plurality of antennas,

a radio equipment connected to the antennas and being located adjacent to the antennas,

wherein the radio equipment comprises for each antenna a separate transceiver module and antenna modules are each comprising one of said antennas and one of said transceiver modules, further comprising modules for determining delays caused by the runtime of antenna signals from a data source to the respective antenna module and for calculating delay coefficients for compensating the delays caused by the respective runtime.

30-34. -34. (canceled)

36. (canceled)

37. (canceled)

38. Active antenna system comprising

a plurality of antennas,

a radio equipment connected to the antennas and being located adjacent to the antennas,

wherein the radio equipment comprises an optical beam former chip and a photonic predistortion element (APD or DPD).

39. (canceled)

40. Method for establishing a secure data connection using an active antenna system having a plurality of antennas for transmitting signals via a plurality of radio-channels, wherein the radio-channels can be beamformed, comprising:

scanning for a communication partner,

estimating the direction of arrival (DOA) of a recognized communication partner,

sub-dividing a signal s(t) containing certain data which are to be transmitted in several partial signals d(t), wherein the partial signals d(t) are distributed onto a certain number (N) of radio-channels.

41-43. -43. (canceled)

44. Method for establishing a secure data connection using an active antenna system having a plurality of antennas for transmitting signals via a plurality of radio-channels, comprising:

measuring certain physical parameters of the radio channels and using the physical parameters for encrypting data to be exchanged between the active antenna system and the communication partner.

45-47. -47. (canceled)