A New Network Deployment Model: Open Access Neighborhood Femtocells

A new network model is introduced in the realm of wireless deployment where femtocells in an open access mode provide substantial capacity gains for operators. In this network model, femtocells are deployed by users in a “few” indoor venues in an adhoc fashion to create enhanced coverage indoors and outdoors for all wireless users in the entire neighborhood.

Studies show that this new neighborhood femto network in dedicated spectrum provides an increase of 5x to 20x in overall system capacity compared to a traditional macro deployment. The extent of capacity gains depend on the femtocells penetration and other factors including the morphology of deployment. Due to the ease of deployment and the fact that customer backhaul and site premises can be leveraged, this new open access neighborhood femto network offers tremendous economic benefits in both lower in CapEx and OpEx.

Importantly, this new neighborhood femto network model uses standardized femto architecture adopted by the industry and thus ensures full compatibility with legacy networks and mobiles. To enable this new deployment and provide the above mentioned benefits, femtocells need to be equipped with QC’s UltraSON suite of enhanced algorithms to ensure:

  1. Each femtocell individually self organizes and calibrates itself to extend signal coverage beyond the indoor facility to outdoors to provide optimal neighborhood coverage area.
  2. Each femtocell self -monitors itself, prevents pilot pollution and mitigate interference effects to other femtocells and macro cells.
  3. Enables users seamless mobility within the femtocell network in the neighborhood and with macro network with no interruption or degradation of service and user experience.