Femtocells

The founding function of cellular communications was to extend the reach of the phone outdoors
into the wider world - so one could always be in touch. But over the past few years the cellular
telecommunications industry has undergone a metamorphosis so that it is now most excited about
a new cellular technology that turns this thinking inside out. Operators are now looking to bring
their cellular networks inside the home. They plan to supplement their outdoor mobile phone
masts with the polar opposite in the home - an extremely low power, tiny cellular access point - a
femtocell. Femtocells not only improve mobile service indoors but also change the economics of
the industry - bringing down costs for consumers and operators alike. But why have these
femtocells come about and what challenges do they face?
The mobile industry has always grappled with two major issues:- coverage and capacity. This is
as true today as ever with 3G networks providing poor in-building coverage and capacity concerns
in the operators backhaul network meaning that mobile broadband services cannot support
widespread usage. The reasons for this are very simple.
Mobile broadband radio networks generally use relatively high frequency signals due to the greater
availability of bandwidth. However signals at these frequencies do not penetrate well through
walls, thereby creating coverage issues inside buildings. Additionally, mobile users indoors require
more powerful signals to penetrate walls which removes capacity and means fewer users can be
accommodated in a cell. Somewhat ironically, 90% of data usage takes place indoors proving that
mobile broadband isnt all about mobility. And although 3G services have been slow to be
adopted, the growing availability of usable mobile devices and flat-rate near-unlimited data plans
have led to a huge leap in take-up which is in turn putting a major strain on backhaul capacity.
So mobile operators face a dilemma - mobile broadband clearly represents the future of their
business, yet coverage and capacity challenges prevent them from delivering such services
effectively and economically over the long term. In femtocells, operators have found a dramatically
unconventional approach to resolving this situation.

Femtocells linked to a cellular network

A femtocell is a small device that plugs into a domestic broadband connection and can give perfect
mobile phone coverage throughout a home or office, cheaper higher quality phone calls, faster
mobile broadband and brand new services - all using existing cellular handsets and devices. In a
stroke, operators eliminate both their capacity and coverage challenges. Instead of pouring more
investment into their outdoor networks to provide extra capacity in the backhaul and over the air,
femtocells offer a genuine alternative. Also by solving the in-building coverage issue from the
inside out, the upper reaches of the spectrum which offer massive bandwidth potential are no
longer out of consideration.

What are Femtocells?

But lets take a step back - what exactly do we mean by a femtocell? For example how is it any
different from a Wi-Fi access point? First and foremost, femtocells use licensed spectrum, unlike
Wi-Fi, which mean they deliver assured service quality over the air and can only be offered by a
mobile operator. The devices which operators are currently planning to launch will mostly support
3G networks although some 2G devices exist and WiMAX devices are planned. Femtocells can

come in the form of a standalone access point or as part of a home gateway which would also
typically include Wi-Fi and a DSL or cable modem. They must meet a consumer price point and
must be entirely end user installed - in fact most femtocells are zero-touch meaning they have no
buttons and auto-configure once attached to power and a broadband connection.
Typically, a single femtocell will deliver voice services simultaneously to at least four users within
the home, while allowing many more to be connected or attached to the cell, accessing services
such as SMS. Additionally, femtocells will deliver data services to multiple users, typically at the
full peak rate supported by the relevant air interface technology, currently several megabits per
second and rising to tens and hundreds of megabits per second in the future. But by removing the
capacity hungry indoor mobile users from the outdoor network, femtocells also in effect improve
performance for consumers outside. Indeed, for each additional indoor femtocell user, system
resources are freed to serve about ten outdoor users. The femtocell behaves like a normal base
station in that as users enter or leave the home their voice or data services are seamlessly handed
over from or to the outdoor network as required.
Subscribers benefit from perfect cellular coverage and faster mobile broadband in the home as well
as a more competitive voice and data tariff. Operators get optimum cellular coverage and more
mobile usage in the home and dramatically reduced operating costs especially through backhaul their single largest OPEX - and power savings. Equally importantly the cellular operators capital
expenditure will significantly drop because accelerating data usage means they will inevitably have
to heavily invest in their outdoor network in terms of new cell sites and backhaul to meet expected
demand - something femtocells do at a fraction of the cost. In fact, Paul Jacobs, Qualcomms CEO,
recently said that the gains in throughput available to femtocell users are equivalent to that
brought by the cell phones shift from analogue to digital.
Finally, as mobile operators look beyond 3G to LTE or WiMAX, femtocells offer a new, dramatically
lower-cost model for network rollout. For example, LTE femtocells could be employed using higher
frequencies to deliver targeted intense high bandwidth requirements inside buildings - exactly
where subscribers most demand it. Operators can then use their existing networks outdoors as
demand slowly builds up and then use the scarce lower frequency spectrum to provide good
quality LTE coverage across entire markets with the minimum number of outdoor network
cells. As we have seen, the simple proposition of lower costs, for both operators and consumers,
combined with improved coverage and services is compelling. Yet there are also challenges which
must be overcome before widespread commercial deployments can become a reality.

Building standards and inter-operability

Femtocell deployments require not only a device in the home, but also equipment in the mobile
core or cellular network that integrates potentially millions of femtocells into the
network. Unfortunately mobile networks are designed to support thousands of base stations, not
millions, so a femtocell concentrator is required. If the costs of deployments are to be kept low it is
important that the concentrator is standardised thereby encouraging economies of scale.
Fortunately, not only are there a number of existing standardised network solutions that can
accommodate femtocells, but the various vendors and operators have already collaborated in the
Femto Forum to create a femtocell specific standard interface, which will be standardised within
3GPP. This standardisation effort will in turn have a major affect on reducing the cost of femtocell
deployments due to economies of scale and competition. Crucially, unlike technological standards
wars such as CDMA vs GSM and BluRay vs HD-DVD, consumers arent affected as their handsets
will work with any femtocell.

The Interference Challenge

A major technical challenge that femtocell designers have faced comes in the form of interference.
Many operators have only two or three distinct radio channels available for operating 3G networks.
These operators have little or no scope for separating the spectrum used by femtocells from that
used by their existing outdoor cell network. A key design goal for femtocells is then to be able to

operate on the same frequency as the outdoor cells, without degrading the overall network
performance with interference. This has to be achieved despite the dramatic increase in the
number of cells involved in large femtocell deployments. Fortunately a strong inherent interference
mitigation factor is provided by the fact that the walls of buildings that have served to keep 3G
signals out also keep the signals in. However, clearly some signals emitted from the femtocell will
escape the home. As such femtocells will include specific features, such as frequent monitoring of
their surrounding radio environment combined with adaptive power control. This allows femtocells
to realise substantial capacity gains while ensuring that the performance available to all users is at
least as good as the network without femtocells.

Keeping it legal
But what if an enterprising subscriber decided to pack their femtocell in their holiday suitcase in
order to enjoy discounted voice and data wherever they go? Such a situation is likely to constitute
an illegal use of transmitting devices and an inappropriate use of the spectrum which is a vital
business asset for operators. As a result operators have specified that femtocells are designed so
that this does not happen.
Femtocells are highly intelligent devices, quite different from the illegal boosters which are
sometimes installed without an operators permission. Operators can identify the femtocells
location using a variety of means, such as sensing the surrounding network or by using the IP
addresses of the DSL or cable network and restrict service appropriately.

Dont panic!
While the analogy of the femtocell as a domestic cellular base station is instructive, it is also open
to misinterpretation. While a femtocell carries out the same basic function as a mobile base station
it uses tens of thousands of times less power - indeed even typically one-tenth of that of a Wi-Fi
access point. Mobile phones themselves emit far less power when connected to a femtocell than in
their normal environment, thereby helping to extend battery life. A key challenge for the industry
is just getting this message across in an environment where some elements of the press are likely
to respond without an understanding of the engineering facts.
All of these challenges - and several smaller ones - need to be addressed swiftly if femtocells are
to realise their potential. However, they certainly arent holding many operators back.
Last year, Sprint-Nextel in the US became the worlds first operator to deploy femtocells but only
for 2G voice - not broadband data where the main benefits reside. Japans SoftBank recently
announced it is to deploy 3G femtocells in January 2009 and several other European operators are
likely to follow in quick succession. It now looks like 2010 will be the year where mass uptake will
occur.
Femtocells represent a huge new opportunity for the mobile industry and provide a service for
customers where a pent-up demand already exists. The concept of moving the operators radio
network into the consumers home turns traditional cellular thinking on its head. Yet the
proposition holds so many benefits for customers and operators alike that its appeal is undeniable.