Method and apparatus to provide cellular telephoneservice to a macro-cell and pico-cell within a building using shared equipmentt

摘要

The present invention is an apparatus and method for providing cellular telephone service to a pico-cell located within a building and extending cellular telephone service from a macro-cell located outside the building to inside the building. A first set of transceivers provide cellular telephone service to the macro-cell and a second set of transceivers provide cellular telephone service to the pico-cell. A series of combiners which combine multiple radio frequency signals into a single radio frequency signal and splitters which replicate a single radio frequency signal into multiple copies of the same radio frequency signal are used to connect both sets of transceivers to a common plurality of antennas located within the building.