GSM MCBTS

GSM Multicarrier BTS is a technology used in GSM to allow several GSM carriers to be processed and combined in the digital domain instead of the analog domain.

The biggest advantage of MCBTS is that the architecture of the base station is much simpler. There are less analog components (amplifiers, mixers, oscillators, filters etc.) necessary. These components are needed only once per antenna instead of once per carrier. The per-carrier circuitries are shifted to the digital domain where they can be integrated into a few chips of silicon.

A second advantage is that there is no need for an analog combiner. The loss of energy in the passive combiner is avoided because the carriers are combined in the digital domain and the multicarrier amplifier output goes directly to the antenna. This results in a better power efficiency of the BTS when multiple carriers are to be transmitted over one antenna (the more carriers per antenna the more efficient the improvement).

Difference between the normal BTS architecture and a MCBTS architecture.