Femtocells – The in-Home Basestation!
In many markets Full Service Telcos and Mobile focused operators are facing real challenges given the extremely high take up rates for their services in the past decade.
Many markets Mobile Teledensity is either approaching 100% or has surpassed it – simply put this means market saturation with even further price pressure on services. The reality that many operators face is that reducing churn is the best way to stabilize Average Revenue per User (ARPU)! And clearly this is not an optimum position to be in.
Advanced new Mobility services such as 3G or 4G are envisaged to assist carriers with this as they enable a “rich” set of valued added services over and above the traditional telephony and messaging services of legacy 2/2.5G networks. The catch is that these new technologies typically require much higher frequencies – and those frequencies are easily attenuated by structures like the “Tall Shiny Buildings” and the “Urban Canyons” – pretty much where the high value subscribers work, live and play!
Mobile Virtual Network Operators looking to establish their market footprints using fixed-mobile convergence strategies like Voice over WiFi or indeed “Challenger Telcos” using an IP/IMS with relative cheap backhaul over the internet are also looking to offer feature rich mobility solutions over a range of access technologies – e.g. WiMax, and face the same issues with respect to offering compelling service propositions to encourage subscribers to churn to them.
Subscribers who cannot use these advanced services where they work, live or play simply force the telcos to compete on price for legacy services.
The 3G access point or “Femtocell” is the technology that is envisaged to beak the nexus for the carrier – as it enables a customer premise device, about the size of a WiFi access point, to distribute the 3G mobility frequencies indoors, where people work live and play, while seamlessly blending with the Radio Frequency plan of the Macro-cell network.
Femtocells are a new disruptive technology being introduced by Mobile Telephony Carriers around the world following extensive trials in 2007/2008. Independent estimates are that 100 million Femtocells with a value as high as $US22.5 billion will be deployed by 2013. 70% of the major telecom equipment suppliers in the world are developing Femtocells. Femtocells are miniature cellular base stations that are located in people’s homes and offices with substantial benefits for both the subscriber and the telephone company.
However, buried inside the Femtocell is a set of technical requirements for synchronization, clocking and frequency reference for the radios used in the device, plus the need to establish unambiguous geographic positioning of the device.
Without accurate synchronization with the macro-cell network the ability to hand-in and hand-out calls, let alone handle a plain-old-telephone-service is impossible.
Without accurate geographic positioning the ability to comply with Emergency Services legislation (e.g. E911/000 etc.) will be problematic – and given that the femto in inherently portable there is the requirement on the operator to only allow the device to operate in regions that they service – for e.g. where they have licensed spectrum and where they have established their E.164 numbering plan.
These requirements are not inherently related and the industry currently has a number of independent, individual solutions....many of which don’t work well and all of which cost too much to enable mass deployment.
It is against this backdrop that SigNav has developed a range of timing, synchronization and clocking solutions for inclusion by OEM partners in their Femtocell products.
- Superior to packet based approaches (IEEE1588 or NTP derived)
- Derived from the same precision source that typically synchronizes a Macrocell – GPS!
- Can be used effectively “Everywhere” – subATTO™ enables that – Eases Femtocell deployment considerations
- Accurate Positioning – For E911 (Emergency Services) compliance or to quench Femtos from being used in non-served regions (Spectral Licenses)
- Clock Stability that enables seamless call “Hand-In” or “Hand-Out”
- Provides precise time from start up using very weak signals
- Low power consumption through continuous tracking rather than repeated acquisition
- Requiring minimal assistance, reducing backchannel bandwidth requirements
Our ability (subATTO™) to enable the reception of GPS signals “deep-indoors”, in urban canyons and in areas where the Signal to Noise ratio is challenging, enables us to offer our partners modules, micro-modules or integrated circuits that enable highly accurate timing, synchronization and clocking solutions – effectively the power of a cesium clock (from the GPS) made available to a mass-market device price point.
And since GPS is used – establishing location information is inherent.
As an active member of the Femto Forum, SigNav is engaged with many of the biggest companies in the world, in this rapidly expanding market.
