Distributed Processing Mechanism utilizing PCI Backplane for 3G Node-B

The typical base transceiver station (BTS) or node-B architecture can be partitioned onto radio frequency (RF) module, baseband module, transport module and control module. The control, transport and baseband modules run their own standard protocols defined in 3GPP. Our node-B has mapped all these modules onto its own data acquisition board utilizing the PCI backplane. This paper describes the communication mechanism between the different data acquisition boards based on the compact PCI (cPCI) platforms. The features available in the PCI bridges in different data acquisition boards have been carefully studied before designing the communication mechanism. Furthermore, the mechanism is developed based on the understanding of the traffic characteristics found in a typical 3G node-B. We present the experimental results of our communication mechanism. The numerical calculation results have proved that our system is capable for supporting the data throughput up to 14 UL/DL 384 kbps user channels.