Femtocells

Advertisement
 Download your Full Reports for Femtocells

Can you hear me now?? was a popular phrase for a while amongst people who were mocking the poor sound and coverage of their mobile phones. Although it turned into something of a joke, it?s no laughing matter when your cell phone suddenly loses its ability to allow you to enjoy clear communication. Unfortunately, this is often the case in homes and buildings where coverage decreases considerably as soon as you go indoors. Since more and more people are ditching their landlines in favor of mobile phones, as well as because of the simple fact that people want to be able to talk on their cell phones wherever they are, it has become necessary to work on new technology that will facilitate calling coverage both indoor and outdoor. Femtocell technology could be the answer. In addition to facilitating better indoor call coverage, this emerging technology reduces the drain that advanced mobile services (such as mobile broadband) are placing on the capacity offered by phone companies.
One of the solutions that people have started to use is femtocell technology. This technology may be better known to the user as an Access Point Base Station, a small device which is installed in the home or office in order to offer better support to mobile phones there. These base stations can accommodate up to five cell phones which means that you can get increased coverage for your whole household. Essentially, you set up the femtocell technology in your home and it serves to enhance the cell phone signal that you receive indoors so that your call quality isn?t decreased when you?re talking indoors. Now many operators such as AT&T, Sprint and Verizon ?in USA, Vodafone in UK are providing Femtocell service.

Connecting femtocells to existing operator networks requires a network architecture that addresses the security needs of operators and mobile users, while supporting the scalable deployment of millions of femtocells.  In addition, it must allow ordinary consumers to install them with plug-and-play simplicity and ensure that critical services such as emergency calling are also supported with the same reliability and accuracy as fixed-line emergency calling. The femtocell network architecture describes the major nodes and connections in a femtocell network, and how they achieve the objectives of mobile subscribers and operators. The femtocell network architecture supports the following key requirements:

  • Service Parity:  Femtocells support the same voice and broadband data services that mobile users are currently receiving on the macrocell network.  This includes circuit-switched services such as text messaging and various voice features, such as call forwarding, caller ID, voicemail and emergency calling.  
  • Call Continuity:  Femtocell networks are well-integrated with the macrocell network so that calls originating on either macrocell or femtocell networks can continue when the user moves into or out of femtocell coverage.  Femtocell network architecture needs to include the necessary connectivity between the femtocell and macrocell networks to support such call continuity.
  • Security:  Femtocells use the same over-the-air security mechanisms that are used in macrocell radio networks.  But additional security capabilities need to be supported to protect against threats that originate from the Internet or through tampering with the femtocell itself.   Femtocell network architecture provides network access security, and includes subscriber and femtocell authentication and authorization procedures to protect against fraud.
  • Self-Installation & Simple Operational Management:  Femtocells are installed by end-users.  Therefore, the femtocell network architecture must support an extremely simple installation procedure with automatic configuration of the femtocell and automated operational management with ?zero-touch? by the end-user.  
  • Scalability:  Femtocell networks can have millions of access points.  Therefore the femtocell network architecture must be scalable to grow into such large networks, while at the same time maintaining reliability and manageability.

 Download your Full Reports for Femtocells

Advertisement

© 2013 123seminarsonly.com All Rights Reserved.