Mobile broadband wireless access point network with wireless backhaul

A mobile broadband wireless communication network comprising:

• a plurality of mobile broadband wireless nodes deployed in micro or pico cells for providing wireless access service to a plurality of mobile terminals over a channel band;
• a plurality of said nodes being grouped in a cluster;
• one of said nodes in each said cluster being a feeder node coupled to a core network;
• each of said nodes including means for performing wireless backhaul to said feeder node on said channel band;
• said nodes in each said cluster being linked in a tree topology to said feeder node;
• each said node comprising:
• a housing;
• a plurality of omni-directional antennas mounted on said housing for access and backhaul transmissions;
• a plurality of transceivers mounted in said housing, each said transceiver having an associated modem and being coupled to one of said antennas;
• and
• a chip including:
• a Media Access Control (MAC) processor which directs and coordinates operation of all other elements in the node;
• a packet processor coupled to an inlet of said MAC processor for providing packets with air interface attributes to said modem;
• a routing table in said MAC processor for routing packets passing therethrough;
• a burst modulator coupled to said MAC processor for producing symbol bursts from a plurality of packets having at least some common air interface attributes, a burst being produced for each sector over which said node is transmitting;
• a symbol builder coupled to said burst modulator for receiving said symbol bursts and building an OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) symbol according to a number of streams, sectors and antenna technique for transmitting each burst, and mapping each burst's symbols to frequency and time slots into an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) time/frequency map;
• a MIMO (Multiple In/Multiple Out) processing and beam forming module coupled to said symbol builder for receiving said mapped OFDMA symbols and processing signals related to multiple input-multiple output communication;
• and
• a transmitter front-end module coupled to said MIMO processing and beam forming module for transmitting said OFDMA signals via a transceiver and associated antenna arrangement.

A method of mobile broadband wireless communication comprising:

• deploying a plurality of mobile broadband wireless nodes in micro or pico cells for providing wireless access service to a plurality of mobile terminals;
• grouping a plurality of said nodes in a cluster;
• coupling one of said nodes in each said cluster to a core network to serve as a feeder node;
• linking said nodes in each said cluster in a tree topology to said feeder node;
• and
• performing wireless backhaul between each of said nodes and said feeder node on said channel band.

A mobile broadband wireless access point unit comprising:

• one RF (Radio Frequency) transceiver for transmitting and receiving both mobile broadband wireless access and mobile broadband wireless backhaul communications;
• a modem coupled to said transceiver;
• a plurality of antennas coupled to said modem;
• and
• one controller for controlling said RF transceiver, said modem and said antennas for both said wireless access and wireless backhaul communications.