3G Node B Design Objectives

It has been a major design objective in 3G design to simplify the RF hardware platform
in order to reduce these costs. As with the handset, it is only necessary to support
twelve 5 MHz paired channels and potentially seven 5 MHz nonpaired channels
in the IMT2000 allocated band instead of the hundreds of channels in AMPS, TDMA,
or GSM.
Unfortunately, of course, many Node Bs will need to continue to support backward
compatibility. Broadband linear amplifiers and software configurable radios are
probably the best solution for these multimode multiband Node Bs. We look at the RF
architecture of a broadband software radio Node B in a case study later in this chapter.