Signal compression for backhaul communications using linear transformations

A method of receiving wireless communication signals across a backhaul channel between a base station and a network processing unit, comprising:

• receiving quantized transformed signal coefficients across the backhaul;
• receiving quantization information across the backhaul;
• decoding transformed signal coefficients from the quantized transformed signal coefficients based on the quantization information;
• and
• performing at least one inverse linear transformation of the transformed signal coefficients across one or more of time and antenna spatial domains to recover a plurality of time-domain, complex-valued signal samples corresponding to a wireless communication signal.

A base station, comprising:

• one or more antennas;
• at least one front end circuit operative to front end process a wireless communication signal received from the antenna, and generate a plurality of time-domain, complex-valued signal samples;
• at least one transformation unit operative to perform a linear transformation of the plurality of time-domain, complex-valued signal samples across one or more of time and antenna spatial domains to generate transformed signal coefficients;
• a transmit bit allocation unit operative to determine a number of quantization bits for quantization of the transformed signal coefficients based on the variance of the coefficients;
• a quantizer operative to quantize the transformed signal coefficients using the number of quantization bits determined by the transmit bit allocation unit;
• and
• a backhaul communication interface operative to transmit quantized transformed signal coefficients and quantization information across the backhaul to a network processing unit.

A network processing unit, comprising:

• a backhaul communication interface operative to receive quantized transformed signal coefficients and quantization information from a plurality of base stations;
• a receive bit allocation unit operative to determine a number of quantization bits for decoding quantized transformed signal coefficients received from a base station, based on the received quantization information;
• a decoder operative to decode the received quantized transformed signal coefficients based on the number of quantization bits determined by the receive bit allocation unit;
• at least one inverse transformation unit operative to perform an inverse linear transformation of the transformed signal coefficients across one or more of time and antenna spatial domains to generate a plurality of time-domain, complex-valued signal samples;
• and
• a processing circuit operative to process the plurality of time-domain, complex-valued signal samples.