System, apparatus and method for dynamic carrier aggregation to multi-beam antenna mapping

An apparatus for dynamic carrier aggregation to antenna mapping in a radio access network comprising:

• a baseband processor having a communication interface for data and control signals;
• a set of a plurality of radio-frequency (RF) transceivers which collectively provide bandwidth for operation with multiple contiguous and non-contiguous component carriers (CC) of at least one spectral band;
• the baseband processor serving each of the plurality of RF transceivers through respective digital interfaces;
• a set of a plurality of antenna groups each comprising a plurality of directional antenna elements;
• each RF transceiver being linked through an RF front end to an antenna port connected to one of the plurality of antenna groups;
• and
• the RF transceivers being interlinked through said RF front ends in a daisy chain configuration wherein for a set of N RF transceivers, N RF front ends and N antenna groups, for n=1, 2, . . . N, RF front end n has a link to RF front end n−1 and a link to RF front end n+1, interconnections between the N RF transceivers, N RF front ends and N antenna groups being dynamically configurable to enable an RF data stream from each of the N RF transceivers to be routed through the daisy chain to any one of the N antenna groups or to multiple antenna groups, and to enable an RF data stream from each of the N antenna groups to be routed through the daisy chain to any one of the RF transceivers.