NetPro Certification Courseware for NetPro Certified Telecom Engineer – N.C.T.

Base Station Equipment and Radio-Frequency Signal Flow

Tower Mounting of Omnidirectional Transmit and Receive Antennas

When looking at a base station tower a casual observer would notice two stick-shaped
antennas pointing downward, and one antenna pointing upward. If so, this means that
this is an omnidirectional cell base station.

Receive Antennas

The two antennas that are pointing downward on the base station tower are receiving
antennas (RX 0 and RX 1). These antennas receive RF signals at the base station from
the mobile telephone. They receive the uplink signal-the mobile-to-base signal. The
diversity receive antenna (the second antenna) compensates for Rayleigh fading in the
uplink to the base station. Diversity is a tool used to optimize the signal received by a
base station antenna. It counteracts the negative effects of Rayleigh fading.

The two receive antennas provide for space diversity as follows:

When a wireless customer presses the send button on the phone to place a call, the
signal enters both of the receive antennas, and travels down the coax cable on the tower
into the base station.

At that point, a device known as a comparator in the base station transceiver examines
both of the received signals, and selects the best signal of the two received. The
comparator continues to dynamically select the best of the two receive signals for the
duration of the wireless call. The call can change from being carried by one receive
antenna to being carried by the other receive antenna dozens or hundreds of times
during an average wireless call.

Note: Space diversity can provide anywhere from a 0.5- to 12-dB difference in received
signal strength between one receive antenna (RX 0) and the other receive antenna
(RX 1).

Figure: Tower mounting of omnidirectional antennas (side view).

 NetPro Certification Courseware for NetPro Certified Telecom Engineer – N.C.T.E

Transmit Antennas

The antenna that is pointing upward at an omni cell base station tower is the transmit
antenna. This antenna is used to transmit from the cell base station to the mobile phone.
These antennas transmit the downlink signal-the base4omobile signal.

In omnidirectional cells, the reason that the receive antennas point downward and the
transmit antenna points upward is to reduce or eliminate intermodulation interference.
Even though the cellular transmit and receive bands are separated by 45 MH4 having
the omni transmit and receive antennas mounted so they point in different directions
helps to reduce the potential for interference.

Cell Site Configuration

Figure: Typical base station transceiver.

Transceivers (Base Station Radios)

Transceivers, or base station radios, have two receive ports (diverse receive signals) one
transmit port, an audio-in channel, an audio-out" channel, and a data line. The data line
runs the functions of the transceiver as the transceiver communicates to the base station
and the MSC. See figure or a depiction of a typical base station transceiver.

RF Signal Flow through a Cell Site: The Downlink

For illustration purposes, the scenario of a mobile-terminated call will be used here. A
wireless customer is receiving a call. From the PSTN trunk that was assigned by the
MSC, the incoming call is routed to the (land) audio-in" input into a transceiver.
 NetPro Certification Courseware for NetPro Certified Telecom Engineer – N.C.T.E

Note: The MSC has already assigned a paired channel and frequencies to this call. The
assigned channel and frequencies will remain the same for the duration of the call, or
until a call handoff is executed.

A power amplifier is used in the downlink signal path to boost the radio signal up to 45
W maximum output. Amplifier signal levels ate measured in decibels. There is one
power amplifier assigned to each channel pail, or transceiver.

If a given cell site has a 16-channel radio bay then there will be four 4-channel
combiners at that cell site. The purpose of the combiner is to allow for the use of one
antenna for multiple radio channels, rather than having one separate antenna dedicated
to each channel at the cell. In other words, without a combiner there would theoretically
be 16 antennas at the cell. Combiners eliminate the cost and poor aesthetics of having to
install a separate antenna and run coax cable down the tower for each and every radio
channel. A by-product of the combiner's call processing is that it reduces the signal level
by half.

Note: A decrease in a power level by one-half means that the overall power has been cut
by 3 dB. Therefore, the signal power at the star connector is now half what it was when
it entered the combiner: It is now 22'/2 W.

Each combiner port must be tuned to the frequency of the radio channels assigned to the
cell by a wireless technician.

A star connector links together all four of the 4-channel combiners.

The RF signal is now routed into a duplexer. The function of the duplexer is to enable
both transmit and receive signals to be routed through the same antenna. The call is then
transmitted out from the cell base station to the mobile telephone at a base station
transmit frequency Duplexers are not always used by all carriers, but they avoid the cost
of having to use two receive antennas instead of one.

Note: The entire process described above goes hand in hand with the actual processing
of a wireless call.

Figure gives a graphical depiction of signal flow over the downlink.

 NetPro Certification Courseware for NetPro Certified Telecom Engineer – N.C.T.E

Figure: Downlink signal processing in a typical Nortel AMPS cell site configuration.

RF Signal Flow through a Cell Site: The Uplink

Once an uplink signal is received into the RX 0 and RX 1 antennas at the cell site, it is
transmitted down into the base station into a special band-pass filter The function of this
equipment is to filter out all frequencies except the receive frequency for the specific
channel processing a given wireless call.

The signal is then routed to a low-noise amplifier, or preamp." The purpose of the
preamp is to boost the received signal to a level that's strong enough to be split into 16
outputs. This is necessary because of loss from impedance as the signal flows through
the coax cable. The low-noise amplifier contributes very little noise to the received
signal.

The call is then routed to a device called a multicoupler. The function of the
multicoupler is to split the two received signals independently into 16 coaxial receive
outputs, which are then routed into 16 separate transceivers.

Note: Each transceiver has two receivers: one connected to the RX 0 diversity antenna
and one connected to the RX 1 diversity antenna.
 NetPro Certification Courseware for NetPro Certified Telecom Engineer – N.C.T.E

The multicoupler's function is somewhat analogous to the combiner's function in that

both pieces of equipment allow for the consolidation and interleaving of signals.

Both received signals now enter the transceiver The transceiver constantly selects the
best of the two received diversity signals via the comparator, and continues to process
the call Once the transceiver has selected the best receive signal, it then routes the call
to the audio-out output, an& then to the MSC. Once the call reaches the MSC, the
switch completes processing. Least cost routing is taking place at this point.

See Figure for a graphical depiction of signal flow over the uplink.

Figure: Uplink signal processing in a typical Nortel AMPS cell site configuration.