A generic telecommunications infrastructure for UPC/PCS

Low infrastructure cost is a primary objective of UPC/PCS. A system infrastructure that is based on a particular modulation type, TDMA or CDMA for example, may rapidly become obsolete if a different modulation becomes more desirable. This paper proposes an infrastructure concept that is modulation insensitive and capable of being adapted to a wide variety of protocol standards. The infrastructure concept developed in this paper can simultaneously support a variety of existing modulations and will be easily adaptable to new modulation types that may become available in the future. The concept is simple; the implementation is not. This is the concept: A widely distributed collection of low-power remote terminals receive and transmit the signals which form the wireless links with subscriber equipment. These remote terminals comprise broad-band high-dynamic-range RF-to-digital converters and digital-to-RF converters that are linked with a few centralized processing centers via high-speed digital data links. All signal processing and linking are done digitally within the few processing centers and are completely software re-configurable. (The processing centers could be co-located with local POPs to minimize the cost of interfacing with the PSTN.) System architecture changes can then be implemented with a software change at the processing centers thereby affording the possibility of supporting a multiplicity of protocol standards. The enabling technology for this infrastructure concept is here today. It is an objective of this paper to demonstrate the feasibility of this infrastructure concept by comparing the requirements of a typical UPC system with the specifications of available enabling technologies