Multi-hop booster

• US 8,682,311 B2
• Filed: 04/25/2008
• Issued: 03/25/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 04/25/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nextivity Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Nextivity Incorporated
• Inventors: Mohebbi, Behzad B.
• Primary Examiner(s): BALAOING, ARIEL A
• Application Number:
  US12/110,259
• Publication Number:
  US 20090036114A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,160 Days
• Field of Search: 455/422.1, 455/7, 455/24, 375/211, 375/230
• US Class Current: 455/422.1
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 7/15542 Selecting at relay station its transmit and receive resources selection of wireless resources by user or terminal H04W72/02; arrangements affording multiple use of the transmission path by two-dimensional division of the resources H04L5/0003, or by allocating sub-channels H04L5/003
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/0007 the frequencies being orthogonal, e.g. OFDM(A), DMT

Abstract

A two-way wireless repeater and booster system and method with watermarking of uplink signals are disclosed. The repeater includes a network unit having at least one wireless receiver and at least one wireless transmitter, the network unit being configured to communicate with the network transceiver. The transceiver further includes a user unit having at least one wireless receiver and at least one wireless transmitter, the user unit being configured to communicate with the user transceiver, and a two-way communication path between the network unit and the user unit to communicate signals between the network transceiver and the user transceiver in autonomous hops comprising between the network transceiver and the network unit, between the user transceiver and the user unit, and between the network unit and the user unit. The network unit and/or user unit is further configured to repeatedly transmit a training sequence to the other unit to train the at least one channel equalizer of the other unit.

Claims

1. A repeater that mediates traffic between a network transceiver and a user transceiver in a cellular wireless communication network, the repeater comprising:

a network unit having at least one wireless receiver and at least one wireless transmitter, the network unit being configured to communicate with the network transceiver;

a user unit having at least one wireless receiver and at least one wireless transmitter, the user unit being configured to communicate with the user transceiver;

a two-way communication path between the network unit and the user unit to communicate signals between the network transceiver and the user transceiver in autonomous hops comprising between the network transceiver and the network unit, between the user transceiver and the user unit, and between the network unit and the user unit;

the hop between the network unit and the user unit being wireless for communicating a signal, and including each of wireless receivers of the user unit and the network unit using at least one channel equalizer to reduce propagation channel time dispersion and fading on the signal; and

at least one of the network unit and the user unit being further configured to repeatedly transmit a training sequence to other unit of the network unit and the user unit to train the at least one channel equalizer of the other unit, the training sequence being transmitted in a guard time of a time division multiplexing communication on the hop between the user unit and the network unit, the guard time being between timeslots of the time division multiplexing communication.

2. The repeater according to claim 1, wherein the wireless receivers used for the hop between the network unit and the user unit use antenna space diversity to reduce propagation channel fading on the signal.

3. The repeater according to claim 1, wherein the time division multiplexing communication is performed by one or more time division multiplex communication systems that include Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) derivative systems.

4. The repeater according to claim 1, wherein the bi-directional control channel signaling is provided in the hop between the network unit and the user unit.

5. The repeater according to claim 4, wherein the bi-directional control channel signaling is transmitted in the guard time.

6. The repeater according to claim 1, wherein each of the network unit and the user unit further comprises:

a first transceiver for communicating with the base transceiver system;

an analog-to-digital converter to digitize radio frequency signals from the first transceiver;

a polyphase filter module for filtering digitized radio frequency signals from the analog-to-digital converter;

a fast fourier transform (FFT) module for performing an FFT operation on the filtered, digitized radio frequency signals;

a channel selection, multiplexing and inverse FFT module for channelizing, multiplexing, and inverse transforming the output of the fast fourier transform module on the transmit side for selecting only the channels of interest from all possible available channels.

7. The repeater according to claim 6, wherein at least one of the network unit and the user unit is configured to watermark uplink signals communicated from the user unit to the network unit, and the network unit is configured to transmit the watermarked uplink signals to the base transceiver system.

8. The repeater according to claim 7, wherein the watermarked uplink signals comprise a watermark signal that includes changing a fixed latency of the communication path between the user unit and the network unit to a variable latency.

9. The repeater according to claim 8, wherein, wherein at least one of the network unit and the user unit is configured to add watermarking information into the variable latency.

10. The repeater according to claim 1, wherein the network unit further comprises:

a first transceiver for communicating with the base transceiver system;

an analog-to-digital converter to digitize radio frequency signals from the first transceiver;

a polyphase filter module for filtering digitized radio frequency signals from the analog-to-digital converter;

a fast fourier transform (FFT) module for performing an FFT operation on the filtered, digitized radio frequency signals;

a channel selection, multiplexing and inverse FFT module for channelizing, multiplexing, and inverse transforming the output of the fast fourier transform module; and

a Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) frequency control channel (FCCH) &

synch channel (SCH) &

broadcast control channel (BCCH) detection circuit being configured to operate in an downlink mode to detect uplink timeslots based on downlink signal bursts, and to replace at least one uplink signal burst within an uplink timeslot with a watermarking signal.

11. The repeater according to claim 10, wherein only half or less of the uplink timeslot is replaced with the watermarking signal.

12. The repeater according to claim 10, wherein the watermark of the uplink signals includes an underlay signature added to an uplink signal burst.