Reconfigurable remote radio head design and implementation for super base station applications

This paper proposes a reconfigurable remote radio head (RRH) software and hardware architecture and presents the results of its implementation. The implemented RRH has been designed for a centralized architecture super base station that facilitates the integration of 2G, 3G, and 4G ground base stations and geosynchronous equatorial orbit (GEO) satellite gateway stations. The reconfigurable RRH is a primary aspect of the system. By modifying the programmable software configuration from the perspective of software-defined radio, the RRH can support multiple frequency allocations. The RRH is composed of radio frequency (RF) modules, intermediate frequency (IF) modules, and some of the physical layer functions. The development of a reconfigurable IF module is emphasized. A filter-bank multiplexing technique has been employed for the IF module, which reduces the use of hardware resources. To this end, we experimentally evaluated the main key performance indicators (KPIs) of the RRH. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed design attains the goal of reducing hardware costs and improving system flexibility and stability.