Method and apparatus for collector arrays of directional antennas co-located with zone managers in wireless communications systems

A communication system having a plurality of forward channel communications and a plurality of corresponding reverse channel communications comprising,

• a region manager means for communicating said plurality of forward channel communications and a plurality of corresponding reverse channel communications in a region,
• a plurality of zone manager means in said region each including,
• broadcaster means having a broadcaster transmitter for broadcasting said plurality of forward channel communications using broadband broadcaster signals to form a plurality of broadcaster forward channels,
• aggregator means for processing reverse channel communications,
• a plurality of collector means for receiving reverse channel communications and forwarding reverse channel communications to said aggregator means,
• a plurality of users,
• each of said users including user receiver means for receiving a different forward channel from said broadcaster means and including user transmitter means for broadcasting user reverse channel communications in a different user reverse channel,
• the improvement characterized by:
• each of said zone manager means associated with a different group of said plurality of collector means including collector means from other ones of said zone manager means,
• said broadcaster means broadcasting said plurality of broadcaster forward channels in a broadcaster zone,
• said plurality of users, located in said broadcaster zone, for providing a plurality of different user reverse channels collectively as a broadband composite signal,
• a plurality of said collector means co-located with said broadcaster means so that each of ones of said plurality of collector means is active to receive said composite signal over at least a portion of said broadcaster zone and so that user reverse channels for some ones of said plurality of users are received by two or more of said collector means,
• each of said collector means including broadband collector receiver means for receiving said broadband composite signal with reverse channel communications from ones of said plurality of users, and
• each of said collector means including collector forwarding means for forwarding, to said aggregator means, said user reverse channel communications from said ones of said plurality of users as collector reverse channel communications,
• said aggregator means for a zone manager means receiving said collector reverse channel communications from said collector means of a group to provide said corresponding reverse channel communications for each of said ones of said plurality of users as a combination of the collector reverse channel communications from said collector means of a group.