Base station networking in personal communications

Base stations in personal communications serve as the interface between portable terminals and their central offices. For many reasons, such as cost-effectiveness, higher reliability, simpler handover, and simple clock distribution, it is desirable to use a network instead of point-to-point links to connect base stations to their central offices. The author considers a base station network that has a regular rectangular mesh topology and an access protocol that is based on the slotted ring. The mesh topology provides clock distribution which can synchronize the timing for time-division multiple access (TDMA) or frequency-division multiaccess (FDMA) radio access when the network is physically regular. The slotted-ring protocol provides simple medium access, simple interface with TDMA or FDMA radio channels and simpler handover processing. The author also discusses how base station networks in different central office zones can be interconnected to form a metropolitan area network for both voice and data traffic