Cellular Base Stations: Open Standards
Gerry Leavey, S.S. Gorshe · Encyclopedia of Wireless and Mobile Communications · 2008
Previous generations of wireless base stations have been implemented with vendor proprietary architectures and interfaces. More recently, industry consortia have been formed to standardize various aspects of base stations. The goal of these new standards is to reduce the cost of future base stations and increase their flexibility for supporting new wireless technologies. Two of these consortia, the Open Base Station Architecture Initiative (OBSAI) and Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI), are the primary focus of this chapter. It has become apparent that there are many advantages to being able to locate the radio head remote from the base station. CPRI defines an interface for this remote radio head (RRH) function. OBSAI addresses various aspects of the base station architecture, including its related interfaces and mechanical specifications, and has also added an interface to support RRH. This chapter also discusses standards relating to delivering accurate reference timing to the base stations.