Access Control Mechanism For Femtocell | Electronics Seminar Topic
Access Control Mechanism For Femtocell
To remain competitive in the wireless communication market,
vendors and operators need to take the reduction of both network cost and
complexity as a priority in future deployments of cellular systems. Moreover,
the growth of the indoor traffic forces network operators to compete with
existing indoor coverage solutions, e.g. WiFi (Wireless Fidelity), DAS
(Distributed Antenna System) to maintain their revenues.
Since 2/3 of voice and 90% of data traffic occurs indoors and
because macrocells are not very efficient when delivering indoor coverage due
to high penetration losses, providing such coverage has become a challenge for
the operators.
That is why the use of FAPs (Femtocell Access Points) seems a
promising approach for coping with this coverage problem. An FAP is a low-cost
low-power cellular base station deployed by the end customer. It is expected
that femtocells will enhance indoor coverage, but they will also deliver high
bandwidths, offer new services, and off-load traffic from existing networks.
HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF FEMTOCELLS
The first interest in femtocells started around 2002 when a
group of engineers at Motorola were investigating possible new applications and
methodologies that could be used with mobile communications. In addition to
developing a mobile television scheme, they also put together a very small UMTS
base station.
A couple of years later in 2004, the idea were beginning to
gain some momentum and a variety of companies were looking into the idea. In
particular two new companies, Ubiquisys and 3WayNetworks were formed in the UK
to address the area of femtocells.
With the idea gaining momentum, and many
more companies investigating femtocell technology, the Femto Forum was set up
in July 2007. Its aim was to promote the wide-scale adoption of femtocells.
With mounting industry pressure to be able to deploy femto cell technology, the
Femto Forum also played a coordinating role in ensuring that the standards were
agreed and released as fast as possible.
Here are some of the developments that have been made by
specific businesses in the industry: Sprint Nextel. This company teamed up with
Samsung Electronics to create a femtocell system that works with all Sprint
handsets. A limited deployment of the system was launched in late 2007 in the
United States in order to test out the product in the general mobile phone
market.
This company has a leg up on the competition because it got an early
start in trials but it’s also basing this on a 2G system whereas most other
businesses are basing their femtocell developments on 3G systems.
