Design of a tunnel relay system with a leaky coaxial cable in an 800-MHz band land mobile telephone system

System design of a tunnel relay system in an 800-MHz band land mobile telephone system is described. Several dozen RF signals from a base station or many different mobile units in the tunnel are directly amplified in the RF stage, without frequency conversion, by a common amplifier in the relay equipment installed near the tunnel entrance, then radiated into the tunnel through a leaky coaxial cable (LCX) or to the base station by a unidirectional antenna. Repeaters are inserted along the LCX to compensate for transmission loss in RF signal power inside the cable. Amplifying a number of RF signals simultaneously, a common amplifier generates intermodulation products and radiates spurious signals. The required amplifier linearity to suppress the spurious signals is discussed in detail. The combination of LCX and service area in the tunnel is determined according to the amplifier performance, the number of radio channels assigned to the base station, and the radio wave propagation characteristics in the tunnel.