3GPP Picks Femtocell Standards

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards body has finally adopted an official architecture and started work on a new standard for home base stations. The specification for the interface between the Home Node B (HNB, the 3GPP term for femtocell) is being decided. The new interface will be called Iu-h and is a blend of existing standards Iu and generic access network (GAN), sometimes referred to as unlicensed mobile access (UMA). The 3GPP chose the solution backed by industry majors Alcatel-Lucent , Kineto Wireless Inc. , and its partners Motorola and NEC Corp. The new standard, which forms part of 3GPP’s Release 8, and interdependent with Broadband Forum extensions to its Technical Report-069 (TR-069), has been completed in just 12 months following close cooperation between 3GPP, the Femto Forum and the Broadband Forum.

Femtocells
The term has already been introduced to in one of the earlier posts. Femtocells are low-power wireless access points that operate in licensed spectrum to connect standard mobile devices to a mobile operator’s network using residential DSL or cable broadband connections.A Home Node B (HNB), is the 3GPP's term for a 3G femtocell. A Node B is an element of a 3G macro Radio Access Network (RAN). A femtocell performs many of the function of a Node B, but is optimized for deployment in the home.

The new standard
The new standard covers the following main areas:

• Network architecture
• Radio & interference aspects
• Femtocell management / provisioning and security

In the proposed network architecture, the interface between femtocells and gateways in the network core re-uses existing 3GPP UMTS protocols and extends them to support the needs of high-volume femtocell deployments. The new standard has adopted the Broadband Forum’s TR-069 management protocol which has been extended to incorporate a new data model for femtocells developed collaboratively by Femto-Forum and Broadband Forum members and published by the Broadband Forum as Technical Report 196 (TR-196).

LTE is IMT advanced - 3GPP

In September 2009 the 3GPP Partners made a formal submission to the ITU proposing that LTE Release 10 and successors (called LTE-Advanced) be evaluated as a candidate for IMT-Advanced. This suggests that the next generation or truly 4G mobile WiMAX is likely to be a specification that is never implemented on a significant scale. This news may be confusing to those who thought that lot of operators have already deployed "4G" WiMAX networks. Since the backwards compatibility of 802.16m with current 802.16e is being emphasized, the hopes that somehow LTE and mobile WiMAX might be merged, or that the latter could become the TDD version of LTE has been put to rest. Operators now installing and committed to 802.16e should be very wary about the long term roadmap for mobile WiMAX technology. They should ensure that they do not lock themselves into this technology for very long, and should be preparing paths for migration to LTE. Intel has been a champion of WiMAX since its inception. But Intel’s future in mobile product markets is much more dependent upon its ability to carve out a substantial share for its low power processors in this business and to have its components incorporated into devices that will work on 3GPP networks, than it is upon the supply of chipsets for WiMAX wireless modems. LTE supports voice and efficient support of voice was one of the key considerations in designing LTE. The voice solution for LTE is IMS VoIP and it is fully specified.