Wireless-wireline physically converged architectures
Embodiments of the present invention provide systems, devices and methods for improving the performance and range of wireless communication systems. In various embodiments, a wireless and wireline architecture is implemented to allow a channel to more efficiently span physical barriers within the channel. The wireline portion of the channel may leverage pre-existing copper deployed within a building by interfacing copper with north and south transceiver nodes that allow the signal to propagate through a physical structure on the wire itself resulting in significantly less signal degradation compared to the signal having to traverse the physical structure wirelessly.
1. A radio access node comprising:
a wireless interface that receives a wireless signal;
a demodulator coupled to the wireless interface, the demodulator generates an analytic signal from the wireless signal by sampling the wireless signal at a first sampling rate;
an interpolator coupled to receive the analytic signal, the interpolator generates an interpolated signal by interpolating the analytic signal at a second sampling rate, the second sampling rate being higher than the first sampling rate;
a frequency-scaling buffer coupled to receive the interpolated signal, the frequency-scaling buffer stores a plurality of sampled symbols within the interpolated signal and subsequently bursts the stored plurality of sampled symbols across a plurality of time slots to generate a frequency-scaled time-duplexed signal used for wireline communication;
a digital-to-analog converter that converts the frequency-scaled time-duplexed signal into an analog frequency-scaled time-duplexed signal; and
a wireline interface that transmits the analog frequency-scaled time-duplexed signal on a wireline link.
2. The radio access node of claim 1 wherein the radio access node operates in one of a plurality of modes.
3. The radio access node of claim 1 wherein the radio access node transmits in a downlink direction during a first period of time and transmits in an uplink direction during a second period of time.
4. The radio access node of claim 2 wherein the radio access node operates in a fast-buffer mode, among the plurality of modes, by changing directions at each symbol.
5. The radio access node of claim 2 wherein the radio access node operates in a Long-Term Evolution (LTE)-latency mode, among the plurality of modes, by adding a delay slot to the plurality of slots to increase cyclic-prefix length on the wireline link.
6. The radio access node of claim 1 wherein the wireless signal is a 5G cellular signal.
7. The radio access node of claim 6 wherein the wireless signal is a frequency division multiplexed signal.
8. A wireline-to-wireless access node comprising:
a wireline interface that receives a frequency-scaled time-duplexed signal;
an analog-to-digital converter coupled to the wireline interface, the analog-to-digital converter converts the frequency-scaled time-duplexed signal to a frequency-scaled digital signal;
a frequency-descaling buffer coupled to receive the frequency-scaled digital signal, the frequency-descaling buffer stores a plurality of symbols within the frequency-scaled digital signal and subsequently outputs descaled samples at a first rate;
a digital-to-analog converter coupled to receive the outputted descaled samples, the digital-to-analog converter converts the descaled samples to a descaled analog signal; and
a wireless interface coupled to receive the descaled analog signal, the wireless interface modulates the descaled analog signal to a selected channel carrier frequency and transmits the modulated analog signal on a wireless link.
9. The wireline-to-wireless access node of claim 8 wherein the wireless link is a 5G cellular link.
10. The wireline-to-wireless access node of claim 8 wherein the plurality of symbols are gated into the frequency-descaling buffer by a Long-Term Evolution (LTE) 2-kHz slot clock.
11. The wireline-to-wireless access node of claim 8 wherein the wireline-to-wireless access node operates in one of a plurality of modes.
12. The wireline-to-wireless access node of claim 11 wherein the wireline-to-wireless access node operates in a fast-buffer mode or a Long-Term Evolution (LTE)-latency mode, among the plurality of modes.
13. A method for communicating a wireless and wireline signal, the method comprising:
receiving a wireless signal;
demodulating the first signal to an analytic signal by sampling the first signal at a first sampling rate;
generating an interpolated signal by interpolating the analytic signal at a second rate, the second rate being faster than the first rate;
scaling the frequency of the interpolated signal across a plurality of time slots to generate a frequency-scaled time-duplexed signal;
converting the frequency-scaled time-duplexed signal into an analog frequency-scaled time-duplexed signal;
transmitting the analog frequency-scaled time-duplexed signal onto a wireline link;
receiving the analog frequency-scaled time-duplexed signal from the wireline link;
converting the analog frequency-scaled time-duplexed signal to a frequency-scaled digital signal;
generating a plurality of descaled symbols from the frequency-scaled digital signal;
converting the plurality of descaled symbols to an analog signal; and
transmitting the analog signal on a wireless link by modulating the analog signal on a selected carrier signal.
14. The method of claim 13 wherein the scaling of the frequency of the interpolated signal is performed using a fast-buffer mode.
15. The method of claim 13 wherein the scaling of the frequency of the interpolated signal is performed using a Long-Term Evolution (LTE)-latency mode.
16. The method of claim 13 wherein the frequency scaling step uses a buffer to convert the interpolated signal into a time-duplexed signal.
17. The method of claim 13 wherein the wireless signal is a 5G cellular link.
18. The method of claim 17 wherein the wireless signal is a frequency division multiplexed signal.
19. The method of claim 13 wherein the wireline link comprises a twisted pair.
20. The method of claim 13 wherein the wireline link comprises an optical fiber connection.