You are on page 1of 23

Published by the Femto Forum

May 2010
www.femtoforum.org
The Best That LTE Can Be
Why LTE Needs Femtocells
The Best That LTE Can Be is published by the Femto Forum
May 2010. All rights reserved.
www.femtoforum.org
telephone +44 (0)845 644 5823 fax +44 (0)845 644 5824 email info@femtoforum.org PO Box 23 GL11 5WA UK
What is the Femto Forum?
The Femto Forum is the only organisation devoted to promoting femtocell technology
worldwide. It is a not-for-prot membership organisation, with membership open to providers
of femtocell technology and to operators with spectrum licences for providing mobile services.
The Forum is international, representing more than 120 members from three continents and
all parts of the femtocell industry, including:
l Major operators
l Major infrastructure vendors
l Specialist femtocell vendors
l Vendors of components, subsystems, silicon and software necessary to create femtocells
The Femto Forum has three main aims:
l To promote adoption of femtocells by making available information to the industry and the
general public;
l To promote the rapid creation of appropriate open standards and interoperability for
femtocells;
l To encourage the development of an active ecosystem of femtocell providers to deliver
ongoing innovation of commercially and technically efcient solutions.
The Femto Forum is technology agnostic and independent. It is not a standards-setting body,
but works with standards organisations and regulators worldwide to provide an aggregated
view of the femtocell market.
A full current list of Femto Forum members and further information is available at
www.femtoforum.org
The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
www.femtoforum.org Page 1
Contents
1 Executve Summary 2
2 Introducton 3
3 LTE Drivers and History 5
4 Why Femtocells for LTE? 6
4.1 Business Issues 6
4.2 Indoor coverage issues 8
4.3 Shannons and Coopers laws 10
5 Uses of femtocells in diferent environments 12
5.1 Femtocells for Residental / SOHO Use 12
5.2 Femtocells for Enterprise Use 13
5.3 Femtocells for Outdoor Use 13
6 LTE Femtocell Standards, Architectures & Services 13
6.1 Standardizaton 14
6.2 Architectural Aspects 14
6.3 Service Aspects 16
7 Technical Deployment Consideratons & Challenges 18
7.1 Interference Management 18
7.2 Spectrum 19
7.3 Backhaul 19
8 Conclusions 21
The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
www.femtoforum.org Page 2
1. Executve Summary
LTE is being standardized by 3GPP to provide mult-megabit bandwidth, more efcient use of
the radio network, latency reducton, improved mobility, and potentally lower cost per bit. LTE
femtocells, also known as Home eNodeB (HeNB) in 3GPP, form part of the LTE standard. Already
deployed in 3G networks, femtocells are low-power access points that operate in licensed spectrum
and provide mobile coverage and capacity over internet-grade backhaul.
Femtocells can strengthen deployments in residental, enterprise, indoor hotspot, and outdoor
hotspot environments. This Femto Forum white paper discusses how femtocells may be used to
realize the full potental of LTE, provide a beter LTE experience for users including higher bit rates,
support new services, ofer alternatve rollout models, and provide an improvement to the mobile
broadband business case by lowering network costs while increasing network capacity.
Numerous mobile operators have publicly stated that femtocells are expected to play a role in LTE,
just as 3G femtocells are making an efectve contributon to 3G networks today. This paper outlines
the case for deploying femtocells
1
in an LTE environment, including:
l Realizing the full potental of LTE
l Coverage
l Throughput
l Capacity
l Cost savings
l Optmizing the macro rollout
l Operatonal savings especially power, backhaul, site rental
l Churn reducton contract extension
l Revenue impact
l New revenue streams from value-added services
l Locaton-specifc tarifs without leakage
l Family contracts
To realize the full potental of LTE requires the use of a fne-grained network architecture that
includes femtocells from the outset. In additon to this white paper, the Femto Forum has
developed a quanttatve business case study
2
on using femtocells in next generaton mobile
network deployments (both LTE and WiMAX based). The Femto Forum study suggests there is a
compelling business case for LTE femtocells.
1
These might be standalone LTE femtocells or dual mode LTE/3G femtocells.
2
The Business Case for Femtocells in the Mobile Broadband Era, Femto Forum white paper, March 2010, available from www.femtoforum.org
The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
Page 3 www.femtoforum.org
2. Introducton
3GPP Release 8 specifes the Evolved Packet System (EPS), which includes the Evolved UTRAN, the
LTE radio access network; and the Evolved Packet Core (EPC), the next generaton packet core. LTE
is designed to provide mult-megabit bandwidth, more efcient use of the radio network, latency
reducton, and a lower cost per bit. This combinaton aims to enhance the users experience and
further drive the demand for mobile multmedia services. With LTE, people will more readily access
their Internet services from mobile devices, including real tme and on demand television, blogging,
social networking and interactve gaming.
Femtocells are low-power access points that operate in licensed spectrum and provide mobile
coverage and capacity over internet-grade backhaul. Femtocell applicatons include residental,
enterprise, indoor hotspot, and outdoor hotspot deployments. Femtocells are lower in cost than
typical macrocells while retaining full operator management even if they are located on the
customer premises.
Figure 1: Generic residental femtocell network architecture
3
This paper illustrates why realizing the potental of LTE requires the use of fne-grained network
architectures that include femtocells from the outset. The benefts of these fne-grained
architectures include:
l Improved performance, coverage and capacity through the use of more, smaller cells.
l Compelling business case economics including new revenue streams, potentally faster
tme-to-market for carrier LTE deployments, and cost savings in deploying LTE.
l Next-generaton femto-enabled services to enhance the user experience and encourage
LTE adopton.
3
The architecture may vary for business and public femtocell deployments (e.g. alternatve IP backhaul technologies may be used).
The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
Page 4 www.femtoforum.org
This white paper is structured as follows:
l Secton 3 provides an introducton and history of LTE and femtocells.
l Secton 4 discusses the need for femtocells in the next generaton mobile networks.
l Secton 5 discusses the uses of femtocells in diferent environments.
l Secton 6 describes the role of LTE femtocells, including architecture, services, and standards.
l Secton 7 discusses some of the technical consideratons and challenges.
l Secton 8 provides conclusions and recommendatons.
The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
Page 5 www.femtoforum.org
3. LTE Drivers and History
LTE standardizaton was initated in 2004. One of the main goals for LTE was to reduce the
network cost per bit as the data trafc growth is outpacing the corresponding growth in revenue.
This cost reducton is possible with LTE due to its high spectral efciency, its all-IP fat network
architecture, and its intelligent management capabilites such as Self-Organizing Network (SON)
functonality. The later two are key aspects of femtocell architectures and have allowed a smooth
introducton of LTE femtocells into the 3GPP standard. In additon, the intenton was to develop a
universal terrestrial radio access network (UTRAN) which would provide a framework for the
evoluton of the 3GPP radio-access technology towards a high-data-rate, low-latency and
packet-optmized radio-access technology as described by 3GPP. With LTE, mobile operators will be
able to ofer a broadband wireless experience that rivals fxed-line oferings.
In September 2006, OFDMA modulaton was selected for the downlink and Single Carrier Frequency
Division Multple Access (SC-FDMA) for the uplink. The standard also called for the use of MIMO to
increase capacity and provide spatal diversity.
LTE is designed to provide high data rates and spectral efciency. In additon to its high spectral
efciency, the standard has been planned to facilitate deployment in many diferent frequency bands
with very litle change to the radio interface. It is resistant to interference between cells and spreads
transmission efciently over the available spectrum. The peak theoretcal downlink data rates for
LTE are up to 326 Mbps over a 20 MHz channel with a 4x4 MIMO confguraton. Figure 2 shows a
comparison of LTE with other technologies in terms of peak data rates.
At the same tme, 3GPP has contnued its evolutonary work on WCDMA within Releases 5, 6, 7, 8,
and 9. The most signifcant development along the way has been the introducton of HSPA/HSPA+,
and the inclusion of higher order modulaton techniques such as 16QAM, 64QAM, 2x2, 4x4 MIMO,
as well as multcarrier. In additon, 3GPP Release 8 added femtocells to 3G (WCDMA) as well as LTE.
While femtocells are a later additon to other standards, LTE standardizaton took into account
femtocell architectures from the beginning, increasing the value of their coverage and capacity
ofering to the operators from day one.
Technology Downlink Uplink
EV-DO Rev A 3.1 Mbps 1.8 Mbps
WCDMA R99 384 kbps 384 kbps
HSPA 14.4 Mbps 5.76 Mbps
HSPA+ 84 Mbps
4
11.5 Mbps
LTE 326 Mbps 170 Mbps
Figure 2: Peak data rates
5
4
With 64QAM modulaton, MIMO and dual cell transmission.
5
Note that these fgures do not present a like-for-like comparison between the diferent technologies for example, 20 MHz of spectrum is assumed
for LTE versus 5 MHZ for HSPA (a comparison on the basis of bits/hertz/sector would look rather diferent).
The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
Page 6 www.femtoforum.org
4. Why Femtocells for LTE?
LTE is the evolutonary path of choice for many WCDMA and CDMA networks, but some mobile
operators are stll not certain about the right tmeframe or strategy for market deployment. With
LTE products becoming commercially available, the decision on the right tmeframe will depend on
several factors unique to each operator and market such as:
l Capacity growth rate as the trafc per subscriber and number of connectons increases
l Spectrum availability and regulatory environment
l Service provisioning strategy
l Availability of suitable backhaul optons
l Compettors movements
In the past both 2G and 3G were deployed at the macro layer as operators aimed at reaching as
many end users as possible for provision of voice and data services. This strategy has resulted today
in typically 90% or greater populaton coverage in developed countries
6
.
While some propose that LTE should follow the same deployment strategy as 3G, the Femto Forum
believes that including femtocells as part of inital LTE deployments makes sense in many of todays
markets for the following reasons:
l To improve performance it is important to bring the user closer to the transmiter; reducton of
the average size of cells is the most powerful way to increase the capacity of a wireless system
(Coopers Law).
l High data trafc and capacity requirements exist mostly at specifc hotspots that are
mainly located indoors where statonary or portable usage is most common. Deploying the
higher capacity of LTE initally in these areas (using femtocells) and then gradually increasing
coverage when users and LTE trafc increases could help operators reduce their inital LTE
spending.
l Although traditonal macro base statons will stll be essental for providing widespread
surface coverage, operators can use both indoor and outdoor femtocells from the outset to
carry substantal amounts of data trafc, thereby realizing major savings on backhaul and
other associated capacity costs. Combining femtocells and macrocells in this way allows
operators to build their LTE networks incrementally in line with demand and avoid the need to
second guess user uptake.
4.1 Business Issues
One of the major industry challenges with the rapidly increasing demand for mobile broadband is
that data trafc growth is out-pacing the growth in revenue. As Figure 3 illustrates, there is a clear
need to dramatcally reduce the cost per bit for data, as growth is projected to accelerate over the
next 3-5 years, and the corresponding revenue must adequately compensate operators. There is
also a clear need to fnd ways to increase revenue per subscriber.
6
See for example Ofcoms sixth annual Communicatons Market Report for mobile populaton coverage fgures in the UK (htp://www.ofcom.org.uk/
research/cm/cmr09/cmr09.pdf).
The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
Page 7 www.femtoforum.org
Figure 3: Trafc / revenue challenge
Femtocells allow operators to create a more compelling mobile broadband/LTE business case, as
outlined in Figure 4, through cost savings and new revenues. Femtocells signifcantly reduce the
delivery cost per bit through savings in both CapEx and OpEx, and they will be essental to driving
down the cost per bit, reducing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and matching costs to revenues.
In additon, femtocells can potentally improve tme-to-market by enabling quick deployment of LTE
and provisioning of new services. Finally, femtocells can enable new revenue streams through, for
example, value-added services and family contracts.
LTE can revolutonise mobile broadband and femtocells can play a role in helping it to
deliver its potental according to Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Femto Forum. By adoptng
femtocells, operators can roll out a much beter performing LTE network than they could with
macro base statons alone and at a lower cost and with less risk. All these factors are crucial in the
current uncertain economic environment.
Figure 4: Business case drivers for LTE femtocells
The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
Page 8 www.femtoforum.org
The Femto Forum has commissioned independent research into the LTE (and WiMAX) femtocell
business case. Conducted by Signals Research Group (SRG), this study
2
included two key studies into
the opportunites for LTE.
In the frst study, SRG examined the case of an operator providing dual-mode HSPA/LTE
femtocells to households which use signifcant quanttes of mobile broadband data. Using
conservatve assumptons regarding the take-up and use of LTE devices, the study showed that
the femtocell operator is able to realize a substantal return on their LTE/HSPA femtocell service
investment across a wide range of mobile broadband customers.
Figure 5: Network cost savings from deploying femtocells as part of an operators LTE network
rollout strategy (femtocells allow slower deployment of the macro network)
2
In the second study, SRG examined the case of an operator deploying a new LTE network. The
operator provides each new subscriber with a fully-subsidized LTE femtocell in order to
guarantee great performance and customer experience indoors. This ensures a high quality LTE
experience in the place where most data is accessed, and supports aggressive LTE adopton rates by
fxing one of the most challenging issues in new network deployment poor indoor coverage and
data speeds. The study indicated that the operator could fully fund a mass deployment of femtocells
by temporarily delaying the deployment of just 5.5% of its macro cell sites
7
(see Figure 5).
4.2 Indoor coverage issues
Studies have shown that a large percentage of calls and an even larger percentage of mobile data
sessions are initated indoors
8
. It will be a major challenge to meet the trafc and bandwidth
2
The Business Case for Femtocells in the Mobile Broadband Era, Femto Forum white paper, March 2010, available from www.femtoforum.org
7
Acknowledging that in many countries operators are commited to a certain percentage populaton coverage under the terms of their
spectrum licence.
8
See for example Informa Telecoms & Media, Mobile Broadband Access at Home, Aug 08
The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
Page 9 www.femtoforum.org
demand using outdoor macro network coverage alone. Addressing indoor capacity through
macrocells alone may be very costly in many scenarios. The number of macrocell sites needed to
provide deep indoor coverage and/or high data-rate services will increase very rapidly. However,
many operators may not have the opportunity or possibility to add new sites.
With mobile broadband, residental and enterprise coverage becomes critcal to the business case.
The issue is heightened for operators deploying LTE at higher frequencies (e.g. 2.6 GHz) which do
not penetrate buildings as well as lower frequencies (e.g. 700 MHz), but the issue is likely to occur
for all frequencies.
While it is challenging to provide coverage and capacity indoors from a macrocell network, serving
users with a local indoor femtocell has a number of signifcant advantages, including:
l Enhanced indoor propagaton environment:
The building provides site shielding from macrocells. Through-wall atenuaton that normally
reduces signal strength to the handset now provides shielding which reduces interference
with and from the macro network.
This is a beneft of femtocells which is ofen overlooked: while the femtocell improves service
to the users, the site shielding benefts all network users, including those not connected to the
femtocell.
l Rich angular multpath, maximising gains available from MIMO
The benefts from MIMO come from having several independent paths between the
transmiter and receiver. The clutered environment indoors with many walls and refectons
provides the multple paths needed to make MIMO efectve (see Figure 6).
l Greater LTE efciency
Femtocells allow LTE to work at its highest modulaton rates and spectral efciency, allowing
the air interface to deliver high-speed services to a large number of high-usage customers.
Figure 6: Indoor Environment Good for MIMO & OFDMA
The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
Page 10 www.femtoforum.org
4.3 Shannons and Coopers Laws
The Shannon limit of a communicatons channel is the theoretcal maximum informaton transfer
rate of the channel for a partcular noise level. The performance of LTE as a next generaton system
is close to Shannons limit (see Figure 7). In macrocells operated at signifcant load, the operatng
point is typically near the lower throughput levels in the graph.
This means more cells with tghter interference controls will be needed to provide quality coverage
and service. This can shif the operatng point towards much higher signal quality (SINR) levels and
realise higher throughputs as a result. This is supported by a detailed Femto Forum study
9
which
demonstrates that the additon of femtocells to the network allows femtocell users to consistently
receive much closer to the headline LTE data rates than those connected to macrocells, even when
the femtocells are used in the same spectrum as the macrocells. Femtocell users also do not have to
contend for resources with as many users as those on the macrocells.
Paul Jacobs, the CEO of Qualcomm has said
10
,the improvement of wireless links that enhance
user throughputs is reaching its limit... there is another method: densely deploying base statons
to shorten the distance between base statons and mobile terminalsAccording to the results of
our research, this efort will possibly result in eight tmes higher throughput per user. In retrospect,
an eight-tmes improvement is equivalent to that brought by the cell phones shif from analog to
digital. This is really an excitng fact.
Figure 7: LTE approaches Shannons Limit, while femtocells can control interference to
substantally increase throughput over macrocells
9
Interference management in OFDMA femtocells, Femto Forum white paper, March 2010, Available from www.femtoforum.org
10
htp://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20080905/157548/
The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
Page 11 www.femtoforum.org
In additon, Coopers Law states that wireless capacity doubles every 30 months. Since 1950 capacity
has increased more than a million fold: much of this has come from beter modulaton, beter
coding and using more frequencies but the dominant factor is using smaller cells (see Figure 8).
Femtocells contnue and extend this trend to allow cells to be even smaller while stll being
cost-efectve when serving only a few users.
Figure 8: Using smaller cells has made the dominant contributon to Coopers Law
11
11
htp://www.arraycomm.com/serve.php?page=Cooper
The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
Page 12 www.femtoforum.org
5. Uses of Femtocells in Diferent Environments
Femtocells have initally targeted the consumer market, providing dedicated coverage at home or
in small ofces. Nevertheless, femtocell standards and economies of scale can also deliver
cost-efectve deployments in larger ofces and in high-trafc indoor and outdoor locatons.
To address the above applicaton scenarios, femtocells are being developed for:
l Residental / SOHO use for indoor private deployment
l Enterprise use for indoor public or private deployment
l Outdoor use for public access deployment
Figure 9: Types of Femtocell Deployments
With 3G femtocells being deployed and LTE arriving, mult-standard femtocells are under
development. The dual mode 3G / LTE femtocell propositon is interestng as it reduces costs, avoids
the need for separate boxes and doesnt require all users to adopt LTE at once
12
.
As mentoned earlier, femtocells can deliver higher data rates than the macro network, especially
to indoor users. This allows 3G/HSPA/HSPA+ femtocells to potentally deliver a service experience
indoors comparable to the LTE experience outdoors in the wider network. As such, an existng 3G
network operator may wish to consider how 3G femtocells can contnue to be used to enhance the
deployment of an LTE overlay on an existng HSPA network.
LTE femtocells will beneft from the SON features available in LTE Release 8 and in the further
releases of LTE, especially from the data provided by the handset to help the system build and adapt
its confguraton fles in an automatc way.
5.1 Femtocells for Residental / SOHO Use
Femtocells for residental/SOHO use are deployed by the end user without requiring any manual
confguraton. They are connected to the network of the mobile operator through xDSL, cable or
12
The study carried out by Signals Research Group (reference 2) includes analysis of the business case for deploying dual mode femtocells.
The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
Page 13 www.femtoforum.org
fbre already present in the house, apartment or ofce premises. The fxed broadband link may place
a constraint on the maximum data rate available to the end user.
Residental femtocells are typically deployed in a Closed Access mode (allowing use only by
authorized handsets approved by the femtocell owner), supportng mobility with the
surrounding public layers (e.g. 2G/3G/LTE macrocells and microcells, which require no re-planning to
accommodate the femtocells).
The number of simultaneous users supported is typically between 4 and 8. The femtocell
access points are managed through a system based on TR-069
13
protocols, possibly shared with the
management of the DSL lines, connected to the management system of the radio access network.
5.2 Femtocells for Enterprise Use
Femtocells for enterprise use may be deployed by IT staf from within the enterprise without any
additonal specialist radio skills. More complex deployments may be carried out by a systems
integrator contracted by the enterprise, or by the mobile operator. The femtocells are connected to
the mobile operators network through the IP link already used for the data trafc of the enterprise
(including VoIP). In order to enable corporate users to access services on the enterprise LAN directly,
local breakout of packet data trafc will be an opton. This also prevents the operators core network
from being afected by a large volume of data trafc from the enterprise.
Femtocells for enterprise use are typically deployed in an Open Access (or Hybrid Access) mode
(allowing use by any handset on the network), supportng mobility between femtocells belonging
to the enterprise and the surrounding public layers (2G/3G/LTE) which require no re-planning to
accommodate femtocells. LTE femtocells may make use of LTEs capability to ofer diferent levels of
service to diferent types of enterprise trafc, (including, for example. guaranteed bit rate and best
eforts service classes).
The number of simultaneous users supported on each femtocell is typically between 8 and 32.
Management of the femtocells is shared by the operator (for mobile network related parameters
using a TR-069 system) and the enterprise (e.g. to control user access to enterprise applicatons via
the femtocell).
5.3 Femtocells for Outdoor Use
Femtocells for outdoor use are expected to operate as public cells and are therefore likely to be
deployed by the operator. They require dedicated high speed backhaul links with sufcient
bandwidth to support the high throughput made possible by LTE.
The number of simultaneous users supported on each femtocell is typically between 32 and 64.
The main objectve of these femtocells is to provide extra coverage and capacity by ofoading slow
moving and data intensive users from the macro / micro layers. Outdoor femtocells are managed by
the mobile operator.
13
Broadband Forum, htp://broadband-forum.org/
The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
Page 14 www.femtoforum.org
6. LTE Femtocell Standards, Architectures & Services
LTE is the frst cellular technology which will be able to take full advantage of femtocell standards
from the outset, as the frst network deployments take place. LTE femtocells are designed to ft
seamlessly into the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) infrastructure using the same interfaces defned for
the macrocells. The same EPC can support a combinaton of femtocells and macrocells.
The remainder of this secton provides an update on the status of LTE femto standards, describes
the architectures available for femtocell deployment, and discusses potental services that can be
deployed.
6.1 Standardizaton
The industry actvity on femtocells, in partcular the Femto Forums actvity on WCDMA femtocells,
resulted in having the femtocell concept considered early in the standardizaton process of LTE, both
by NGMN in the defniton of requirements and by 3GPP in the development of standards from
Release 8. With the standardizaton of LTE, it is possible to use 3GPP Release 9 for the defniton
of standards-compliant LTE femtocells. Many solutons defned for WCDMA femtocells are being
reused for LTE femtocells, for example for management and security, which should result in reduced
tme to market and in reduced costs.
6.2 Architectural Aspects
14

Since LTE/SAE is based on a fat all-IP architecture, the architecture and interfaces are the same
for femtocells as for macrocells. LTE femtocells (Home eNodeBs) require no new interfaces to be
defned and no changes are required to EPC elements.
There are multple possible architectures for connectng LTE femtocells to the core network.
A new optonal element, called the Home eNodeB Gateway (HeNB GW), is defned to provide
aggregaton of multple Home eNodeBs in the core network, as shown in Figure 10. LTE femtocells
are fully compatble with the all-IP fat EPC architecture, resultng in the Home eNodeB Gateway
being optonal. The HeNB GW aggregates S1 interfaces (S1-MME and S1-U), potentally improving
the scalability of the core network in regard to femtocells.
There are two variatons of the HeNB GW defned, with one aggregatng the control plane only while
the other aggregates both the control and bearer. Figure 10 shows the architecture where the HeNB
GW aggregates both the control and bearer plane trafc and sends the control trafc to the MME
and the bearer trafc to the S-GW.
14
Note that this secton describes 3GPPs HeNB architecture, which implies low power femtocells for residental and small business applicatons.
Large enterprise use may be based on HeNB or on higher power femtocells and may introduce, in future 3GPP Releases, more complex requirements
resultng in a diferent architecture.
The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
Page 15 www.femtoforum.org
Figure 10: HeNB GW aggregates both the control and bearer plane trafc (source: 3GPP)
Figure 11 shows the variant of the architecture where the HeNB GW only aggregates the control
plane trafc from multple HeNBs to the MME.

Figure 11: HeNB GW aggregates control plane trafc only (source: 3GPP)
Finally, as stated earlier, the HeNB GW is an optonal element and the HeNB can be directly
connected to the MME and S-GW (see Figure 12), assuming that the MME and S-GW have sufcient
capacity to support large numbers of femtocell S1 interfaces.

The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
Page 16 www.femtoforum.org
Figure 12: LTE femtocells without HeNB GW (source: 3GPP)
6.3 Service Aspects
Femtocells will enable a wide variety of services in the femtozone
15
, including:
l Great home coverage with greater capacity
l Femtozone tarifs (cheaper use of mobile services via the femtocell)
l Premium service quality (faster data, higher call quality)
l Unlimited data services, or tered data services
l Compelling new femtozone services, including multmedia and convergence services
Figure 13: Enabling Femtocell Customer Propositons
Femtocells can act as a portal to in-building services and automaton femtozone services. This
includes high-bandwidth connected-home services, and services that require presence, context,
and locaton.
15
The region within which femtocell-specifc tarifs and services are available.
The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
Page 17 www.femtoforum.org
Femtocells can ofer a wide range of new services. Examples relevant to the home include:
l Legacy mobile services with higher Quality of Experience (QoE), higher speed services, and
reduced latency.
l Access to services available today on personal computers and other home devices.
l New services enabled by the combinaton of telecom and multmedia capabilites from the
integraton of the femtocell in the digital home.
l Mobile and interactve TV services, including mobility and integraton with High Defniton
IPTV services enabled via the femtocell.
l Upgrading content based on femtocell coverage and device type, e.g., high defniton dynamic
pictures on the mobile terminal for movie selecton.
l Home multmedia networking with device contnuity, e.g., between PCs, TV, etc. These
applicatons may include machine-to-machine services within the home or business, e.g., local
appliances and web cameras.
l Fixed mobile convergence integraton of HDTV and home media services.
Figure 14: Enabling Next-Generaton Femtozone Services
The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
Page 18 www.femtoforum.org
7. Technical Deployment Consideratons & Challenges
7.1 Interference Management
Detailed studies of interference management for LTE have been carried out in the Femto Forum
9
.
Several scenarios were identfed as benign, while others can be handled through interference
mitgaton techniques.
The fundamental interference scenarios are the same for LTE femtocells as for 3G WCDMA
femtocells, for example:
l Femto to macro interference (both uplink and downlink)
l Macro to femto interference (both uplink and downlink)
l Femto to femto interference (both uplink and downlink)
The extent of the interference issue depends on several factors including:
l Co-channel operaton versus adjacent channel operaton
l Closed Access femtocells versus Open Access
Some scenarios (e.g. femto downlink to macro, femto uplink to macro, femto downlink to nearby
femto and femto uplink to nearby femto) could potentally have signifcant impact on performance.
However, it has been found that interference mitgaton techniques can provide acceptable and
robust performance.
Some of the interference mitgaton techniques applicable to LTE are in line with those developed for
3G WCDMA femto deployments, such as adaptve femto power control based on distance or macro
signal measurements at the femtocell on the downlink. Enhancements such as macro UE-aware
power control of femto nodes have also been identfed by the Femto Forum
9
.
Having the fexibility of frequency-domain resource management and coordinaton, LTE ofers a
new dimension for additonal interference mitgaton techniques. For example, enhanced frequency
selectve scheduling, and semi-statc Fractonal Frequency Reuse and dynamic resource
coordinaton have been explored
9
. 3GPP study reports 36.921 and 36.922 evaluate the ICIC
mechanisms which could be implemented for support of Rel9 LTE femtocells.
These interference mitgaton techniques are partcularly useful for dynamically allocatng radio
resource or spectrum within a cell or between multple cells (e.g. between femtocells in an
enterprise deployment) as the load profle varies in the RAN.
Overall, the Femto Forum study
9
found that LTE femtocells can coexist with macrocells in the
same channels, given the use of appropriate interference mitgaton techniques, even in the most
challenging situatons for interference. This is important, given that wide bandwidths may be
needed for LTE, and the limited spectrum which may be available to operators in some
frequency bands.
9
Interference management in OFDMA femtocells, Femto Forum white paper, March 2010, Available from www.femtoforum.org
The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
Page 19 www.femtoforum.org
7.2 Spectrum
LTE supports many frequency bands, currently ranging from 700 MHz to 2.6 GHz. Femtocells can
use any and all of these standardized bands and in the process can increase their usefulness to the
operator and user. Dedicated spectrum bands for femtocells are not required. Some of the spectrum
and regulatory opportunites presented by femtocells include:
l Opening up spectrum bands: conventonal macrocell deployments exhibit very diferent
economics at high frequencies, partcularly bands above 1 GHz, so such bands are usually
seen as being appropriate for delivering high capacity but not as a main means of delivering
coverage. Femtocell performance, however, is almost independent of spectrum band. This
enables femtocells to be used economically in higher frequencies, but also to operate
efciently in lower frequency bands. In these bands, femtocells can reduce their coverage
area to deliver high capacity without creatng excessive interference. Their self-tuning nature
also allows them to tolerate interference from a wide range of sources, such as other cells and
digital TV.
l Re-using existng bands: femtocells ofer the possibility of making use of small elements
of spectrum which may not be heavily used today, such as TDD sub-bands and even guard
bands in some circumstances. They can also facilitate progressive migraton of bands between
technologies, so that for example bands used for 2G trafc can gain an underlay of LTE
femtocells before those bands are completely cleared of existng trafc.
l Spectrum and economic efciencies: the dense spectrum reuse and high interference
protecton inherent in femtocells deliver very high capacity from a given spectrum bandwidth,
delivering very high spectrum efciency which is a goal for operators and regulators alike.
Likewise, the ability to deliver deep indoor coverage at much lower cost than a macrocell
network enables economic efciencies which are in the interests of the end-customer,
operator and regulator alike.
l Innovaton and competton: femtocell deployments can support new approaches to
enabling an innovatve and compettve market for mobile broadband services. For example,
inside-out deployments of femtocells as the startng point for a new network can enable new
and existng operators to provide LTE services within smaller spectrum bandwidths than would
be viable for macrocells. They also enable the development of new services and enhanced
customer experience with a lower entry barrier than is conventonally possible, thereby
encouraging and enabling innovaton in the customer service ofered.
7.3 Backhaul
In the following, we focus on residental applicatons, giving a brief picture of fxed networks
evoluton and backhaul speeds. Backhaul availability and bandwidth is a critcal component of
femtocell deployments. The following are some consideratons related to backhaul:
l Throughout the world, progressive evoluton to faster residental broadband speeds is
predicted, with major growth in the period for LTE introducton (see Figure 15).
l The existng classical broadband market is expected to migrate to VDSL and FTTH, including:
l Multchannel, interactve, and HD IPTV
l Internet TV/Video
l Home multmedia networking capabilites
The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
Page 20 www.femtoforum.org
l According to IDATE, high bandwidth fxed network deployments are forecast to
accelerate: there will be about 30 million subscribers (FTTH) in Japan by 2013 (ADSL
subscribers decreasing to 7.5 million) and, by 2015, more than 21 million in Europe (4.5 million
in France) and stll 90 million ADSL subscribers.
l According to the Fiber to the Home Council
16
, as of September 2009 the number of U.S. homes
passed by FTTH networks exceeded 17 million, with more than 5 million of these homes
connected. The FCCs Natonal Broadband Plan recommends that at least 100 million
additonal U.S. homes have afordable access to broadband with speeds of at least 100
megabits per second by the year 2020
17
.
Furthermore, increasing amounts of data trafc are expected to remain within the home LAN (see
6.3), which is not limited by the backhaul bandwidth available. In this case, availability of the full air
interface speeds of LTE to the handset in the home will be an advantage, even if the fxed broadband
connecton has lower bandwidth.
Figure 15: Broadband Connectons and LTE Subscribers
16
htp://www.fthcouncil.org/en
17
htp://www.broadband.gov/
The Femto Forum: The Best That LTE Can Be
Page 21 www.femtoforum.org
8. Conclusions
To realize its full potental, LTE benefts from the inclusion of femtocells from the outset:
l The recently published Signals Research Group / Femto Forum study
18
suggests there is a good
business case for femtocells in LTE.
l Efectve interference mitgaton techniques have been identfed in detailed studies, enabling
capacity and performance benefts.
l Standards have been agreed for the integraton and management of femtocells in LTE.
l Femtocells help enable new service opportunites.
LTE can revolutonise mobile broadband and femtocells can play a role in helping it to deliver
its potental. By adoptng femtocells operators can roll out a much beter performing LTE network
than they could with macro base statons alone and at a lower cost and with less risk. All these
factors are crucial in the current uncertain economic environment.
Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Femto Forum.
18
The Business Case for Femtocells in the Mobile Broadband Era, Femto Forum white paper, March 2010, Available from www.femtoforum.org

You might also like