TECHNIQUES FOR DIMINISHING LATENCY IN A DISTRIBUTED ANTENNA SYSTEM

1 . A distributed antenna system (DAS) serving a base station, the distributed antenna system comprising:

a donor card configured to couple the base station to the DAS and to communicate time-domain digital data therebetween;

a plurality of radio units (RUs); and

a switched Ethernet network coupling the plurality of RUs and the donor card;

wherein the DAS is configured so that the time-domain digital data is communicated over the switched Ethernet network in packets having a fixed latency, wherein packet size varies as a function of carrier bandwidth.

2 . The DAS of claim 1 , further comprising a master unit configured to couple the donor card to the plurality of radio units.

3 . The DAS of claim 1 , wherein a packet of the time-domain digital data is transmitted, over the switched Ethernet network, at each Jiffy, wherein a Jiffy is a fixed time interval.

4 . The DAS of claim 3 , wherein the DAS is configured so that each of the packets comprises a Jiffy number field, a Layout Identifier field, a number of blocks field, and one or more blocks of the time-domain digital data, wherein a block is a minimum data unit of the time-domain digital data.

5 . The DAS of claim 1 , wherein each packet comprises at least one block which is a minimum data unit.

6 . The DAS of claim 1 , wherein the donor card and each of the plurality of RUs each comprise a fractional resampler supporting run-time changes of a re-sampling ratio based upon carrier bandwidth of data.

7 . The DAS of claim 6 , wherein each fractional resampler comprises a reconfigurable resampler or a fixed number of resamplers, wherein the fixed number equals a number of possible carrier bandwidths.

8 . A distributed antenna system (DAS) serving a base station, the distributed antenna system comprising:

a donor card configured to couple the base station to the DAS and to communicate time-domain digital data therebetween; and

a plurality of radio units (RUs) coupled to the donor card via a switched Ethernet network;

wherein at least one of the donor card and each of the plurality of RUs each comprise a fractional resampler supporting run-time changes of a re-sampling ratio based upon carrier bandwidth of data.

9 . The DAS of claim 8 , wherein the fractional resampler is implemented using programmable logic circuitry, wherein multiple filter structures are stored in a design partition of the programmable logic circuitry.

10 . The DAS of claim 8 , wherein the donor card comprises one of a RF donor card configured to couple the base station to the DAS using an analog RF interface and a CPRI digital donor card configured to couple the base station to the DAS using an CPRI fronthaul interface.

11 . The DAS of claim 8 , further comprising a master unit configured to couple the donor card to the plurality of radio units.

12 . The DAS of claim 8 , wherein a packet of the time-domain digital data is transmitted, over the switched Ethernet network, at each Jiffy, wherein a Jiffy is a fixed time interval.

13 . The DAS of claim 12 , wherein the DAS is configured so that each packet comprises a Jiffy number field, a Layout Identifier field, a number of blocks field, and one or more blocks of time-domain digital data, wherein a block is a minimum data unit of time-domain digital data.

14 . A distributed antenna system (DAS) serving a base station, the distributed antenna system comprising:

a donor card configured to couple the base station to the DAS and to communicate time-domain digital data therebetween;

a master unit configured to couple an open radio access network (O-RAN) distributed unit to the DAS and to communicate O-RAN data therebetween;

at least one intermediate combining node (ICN);

a plurality of radio units (RUs) coupled to the master unit through the ICN;

a switched Ethernet network; and

wherein the plurality of RUs, the master unit, ICN, and RUs are coupled to each other via the switched Ethernet network;

wherein the ICN is configured to fragment the O-RAN data and combine fragments of the O-RAN data with the time-domain digital data and communicate the combined data to RUs.

15 . The DAS of claim 14 , wherein a packet of the time-domain digital data is transmitted, over the switched Ethernet network, at each Jiffy, wherein a Jiffy is a fixed time interval.

16 . The DAS of claim 15 , wherein the DAS is configured so that each packet comprises a Jiffy number field, a Layout Identifier field, a number of blocks field, and one or more blocks of the time-domain digital data, wherein a block is a minimum data unit of the time-domain digital data.

17 . The DAS of claim 14 , wherein the donor card and each of the plurality of RUs each comprise a fractional resampler supporting run-time changes of a re-sampling ratio based upon carrier bandwidth of data.

18 . The DAS of claim 17 , wherein each fractional resampler comprises a reconfigurable resampler or a fixed number of resamplers, wherein the fixed number equals a number of possible carrier bandwidths.

19 . A method for defining a packet layout template, the method comprising:

receiving a list of carrier-antenna configurations whose data is to be transmitted within a distributed antenna system (DAS), and a bandwidth of each carrier;

determining a number of blocks of data of the packet layout template using the bandwidth of each carrier and a number of antenna ports of each carrier;

using the number of blocks, creating the packet layout template including at least one block, wherein a number of the at least one block equals a maximum transmission unit (MTU) level or a number of blocks so that there are not remaining blocks to place in the packet layout template;

assigning a unique packet layout identifier to the packet layout template;

determining whether all blocks have been included in at least one packet layout template; and

determining that all of the blocks have been included in the at least one packet layout template, then transferring each packet layout template and corresponding packet layout identifier to each component of the DAS configured to at least one of: construct packets according to each packet layout template and to extract the data from each packet formed according to a packet layout template.

20 . The method of claim 19 , wherein the MTU level is specified in eight bit bytes.