Femtocells
The femtocell systems engineering program is focused on addressing interference management and self configuration of customer-deployed femtocells. Femtocells represent the next frontier in the evolution of cellular systems. While the evolution from second generation to third generation cellular technology was characterized by improvements in spectral efficiency achieved through physical and MAC layer enhancements, femtocells provide improvements in area spectral efficiency by permitting very dense reuse.
Femtocells benefit the end user by providing excellent user experience through better coverage for voice and higher data throughputs. Femtocells allow the service provider to offload traffic from the expensive macro network. By reducing infrastructure deployment cost, femtocells provide the service provider an efficient and inexpensive path to network growth to maximize the revenue potential of the licensed spectrum.
Comprehensive systems engineering solutions have been developed to achieve these goals of self configuration and interference management in unplanned femtocell deployments. Femtocells must discover their location to choose the licensed band of operation, derive timing from the macro network, determine transmit power to achieve the desired coverage, select the scrambling code for operation, and construct a neighbor list for handoff. Femtocells must be designed to operate in adverse jamming conditions, when an un-associated mobile communicating with the macrocell or another femtocell approaches too close without being power controlled by the femtocell.
Once deployed in the home or enterprise, the user has access to unlimited use for voice and data service within the home on his mobile device. In addition, through the femtocell the mobile device will become an integral component of the user’s home network allowing the user to directly access media and servers within the home directly from his mobile device.
