Method and apparatus for providing a broadband, wireless, communications network

Abstract

Method and apparatus for providing a broadband, wireless network comprising a neighborhood communications gateway that accepts all incoming communications signals and securely broadcasts those signals throughout a neighborhood of residences. Each communications appliance within the neighborhood is outfitted with a receiver that decodes the broadcast signals and couples the signals to the input terminals of the associated communications appliance. The system is completely “plug-and-play” such that a user can quickly and easily utilize the gateway for many communications appliances.

What is claimed is:  
     
         1 . Apparatus for providing a wireless wide area network for a neighborhood of residences comprising: 
 a neighborhood gateway for receiving a plurality of signals, selecting specific signals from said plurality of signals and transmitting the selected signals through an antenna; and    a plurality of receivers for receiving said transmitted signals, where at least one receiver is located in a residence and each of the receiver converts the transmitted signal into a format that is compatible with a network appliance.    
     
     
         2 . The apparatus of  claim 1  wherein said plurality of signals comprise one or more signals selected from a group comprising analog cable television, digital cable television, plain old telephone signals, Digital Subscriber Line signals, satellite television signals, over-the-air television signals and any combination thereof.  
     
     
         3 . The apparatus of  claim 1  further comprising a transmitter coupled to said network appliance for transmitting a signal selection signal to said gateway.  
     
     
         4 . The apparatus of  claim 1  wherein said gateway comprises a transceiver for transmitting said selected signals and for receiving control signals from said network appliances.  
     
     
         5 . The apparatus of  claim 1  wherein said receiver comprises at least two antennas.  
     
     
         6 . The apparatus of  claim 5  wherein said receiver further comprises a spatial diversity combiner coupled to said at least two antennas.  
     
     
         7 . The apparatus of  claim 4  wherein said transceiver comprises a spatial diversity combiner and a plurality of antennas.  
     
     
         8 . The apparatus of  claim 5  wherein said receiver comprises: 
 a tuner coupled to each antenna;  
 an analog-to-digital converter coupled to each tuner;  
 a timing recovery circuit coupled to each analog to digital converter;  
 a spatial equalizer for each digitized signal;  
 a combiner for combining the output signals from each of the spatial equalizers;  
 a temporal equalizer for supressing inter-symbol interference from the combined signal;  
 a symbol sampler for sampling the symbols;  
 a tap controller for adjusting the tap weights of the spatial equalizers and the temporal equalizers.  
 
     
     
         9 . The apparatus of  claim 7  further comprising an appliance specific processor for processing the symbols to form an appliance compliant signal.  
     
     
         10 . The apparatus of  claim 1  wherein said gateway transmits signals in the 5.725 to 5.825 GHz band.  
     
     
         11 . The apparatus of  claim 1  wherein said gateway transmits 20 to 40 Mbits/sec in 6 MHz channels.  
     
     
         12 . The apparatus of  claim 11  wherein said gateway is capable of transmitting approximately 50 channels.  
     
     
         13 . The apparatus of  claim 3  wherein said transmitter produces signals in the 5.15 to 5.25 GHz band.  
     
     
         14 . The apparatus of  claim 3  wherein said transmitter produces QPSK modulated signals.  
     
     
         15 . The apparatus of  claim 1  wherein said gateway transmits 256-ary signals.  
     
     
         16 . A neighborhood gateway for providing a wireless wide area network across a neighborhood of residences comprising: 
 a plurality of tuner modules;    a plurality of demodulators coupled to said tuner modules;    at least one decoder coupled to said plurality of demodulators;    a transmitter portion for modulating and transmitting a forward signal; and    a receiver portion coupled to a gateway firewall for receiving commands from a network appliance to request one of said plurality of tuner modules to select a particular channel for transmission as a forward signal.    
     
     
         17 . The apparatus of  claim 16  wherein said plurality of tuner modules comprise one or more of the following tuners: 
 a VHF tuner;  
 a UHF tuner;  
 a cable channel tuner; and  
 a DSB tuner.  
 
     
     
         18 . The apparatus of  claim 16  further comprising: 
 a reconfigurable ATM adaptation level 2 circuit coupled to an xDSL stream and to said gateway firewall.  
 
     
     
         19 . The apparatus of  claim 16  wherein said transmitter portion comprises: 
 an encoder;  
 an M-ary modulator; and  
 a transmitter.  
 
     
     
         20 . The apparatus of  claim 19  wherein said M-ary modulator is a 256-ary modulator.  
     
     
         21 . The apparatus of  claim 16  wherein said receiver is a QPSK receiver.  
     
     
         22 . A method of providing a wireless wide area network for a neighborhood of users comprising: 
 receiving a channel selection signal from a network appliance;    selecting a channel of information from a plurality of channels in response to said channel selection signal;    demodulating and decoding a signal in said selected channel;    encoding and modulating said signal to produce an M-ary signal; and    transmitting said M-ary signal to said network appliance.    
     
     
         23 . The method of  claim 22  further comprising: 
 receiving said M-ary signal at said network appliance; and  
 demodulating and decoding said M-ary signal to display information to a user.  
 
     
     
         24 . The method of  claim 23  wherein said M-ary signal receiving step further comprises: 
 receiving said M-ary signal at a plurality of antennas; and  
 diversity combining said M-ary signals received by each antenna.