Wireless communication system and related method for processing uplink fronthaul data

A method for processing uplink signals from a plurality of remote units, the method comprising:

• receiving a data set from each of the plurality of remote units, each of the data sets having a plurality of sets of resource elements, each of the sets of resource elements corresponding to a user equipment connected to two or more of the remote units;
• computing a weighted sum of each of the received sets of resource elements corresponding to each user equipment to generate a set of summed weighted resource elements;
• and
• transmitting the summed weighted resource elements to a baseband processor, wherein the computing the weighted sum of each of the received sets of resource elements comprises:
• computing a weighting coefficient corresponding to each resource element, and
• multiplying each resource element data by its corresponding weighting coefficient to generate a weighted value;
• and
• summing the weighted values.

A method for processing uplink signals from a plurality of remote units, the method comprising:

• receiving a data set from each of the plurality of remote units, each of the data sets having a plurality of sets of resource elements, each of the sets of resource elements corresponding to a user equipment connected to two or more of the plurality of remote units;
• identifying two or more sets of resource elements corresponding to a given user equipment having a signal strength that exceeds a threshold;
• summing the two or more sets of resource elements to generate a set of summed resource elements corresponding to the given user equipment;
• and
• transmitting the set of summed resource elements to a baseband processor,
• wherein the summing the two or more sets of resource elements to generate the set of summed resource elements corresponding to the given user equipment comprises computing a coherent sum of amplitude and phase data.