Thursday, June 2, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Infographic: What is a Residential Femtocell?
Saturday, April 2, 2011
April fool jokes...in case you missed
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Attocell: Smaller Femtocell
A few years back, I blogged about how Femtocells can be used to steal the spectrum. Well, Attocell legally allows to do just that. The press release states the following:
The attocell connects to a user’s laptop via USB, which provides power and an internet connection. It then analyses the IP address and radio environment to determine which country it is in, and sets its 3G radio power accordingly to below the licenced level. In some countries its range will be just 5mm, in other countries, it could cover a whole room.
Like Ubiquisys femtocells, the attocell continuously monitors its radio environment to ensure that there is zero impact on existing mobile networks. This intelligence, combined with its tiny power output, is likely to make the attocell exempt from regulatory controls and the requirement for type approval.
In 5mm mode, the traveller simply lays the iPhone on top of the device and the phone connects automatically, just like a regular femtocell. Calls can be made using a Bluetooth or wired headset , or by using the iPhone’s speaker.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
The Innovation Driving Femto-powered Small Cells
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Ubiquisys and PicoChip Interviews at Femtocell World Summit
Thursday, July 8, 2010
My crazy ideas and Softbank's free Femtocell (+ ADSL and maybe Femtocalls)
Thursday, April 22, 2010
When Femtocells become Picocells
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Femtocell Technology Map from Ubiquisys
Sunday, February 28, 2010
BBC and Ubiquisys stream multiple videos over a femtocell at MWC 2010
Thursday, November 26, 2009
SuperFemtos, 'greater femtocells' and 'wide area femtocells'
The Wide Area Femtocells have a capacity of up to 16 calls and can either be mounted outdoors, or placed indoors with an external antenna, typically attached to the roof of the building. They can be deployed very quickly, because they continuously adapt their radio configuration according to the operator’s policies, working in harmony with the regular mobile network and eliminating the need for a radio planning project.
The solution can be combined with Ubiquisys Grid System technology to cover still larger areas with multiple femtocells, which form a self-organising mesh of coverage and capacity.
Ubiquisys has performed a field demonstration of its wide area femtocells in a rural area near Swindon in the UK. The demonstration showed that for less energy than it takes to power a light bulb, a village area with a 1.5km radius was provided with comprehensive coverage.
The wide area femtocell solution is commercially available today and is being actively deployed.
The PC8219E is a programmable, flexible, easily integrated product that caters for multiple users, has self configuration features and backhauls via the internet. Featuring industry-standard FAPI and FRMI interfaces, as defined by the Femto Forum, the reference design also has fully-compliant security functions. The design includes a network monitoring function that allows the femtocell to reconfigure itself to behave like a handset receive chain, synchronizing with a macro-base station nearby, improving network planning and providing the basis for Self Organizing Network (SON) functions.
This new variety of mobile cells has been termed 'greater femtocells' or 'superfemtos'. Such products are similar to the 3GPP 'Local Area Basestation' or traditional picocells, but add the femtocell's capabilities to use standard backhaul and to self-configure for interference management. The Femto Forum has recently standardized femtocells into Class 1 (typically residential), Class 2 (primarily indoor for enterprise) and Class 3 (for rural, metro and wider area deployment).
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Report on 'Femtocell Applications Live' at Femtocells World Summit
There were 12 companies showing their demo. Unfortunately I was not able to capture the complete details but here is summary of my understanding (and notes and photos).
Before we proceed further, I should also mention that Femto Forum launched Services Special Interest Group (SSIG) whose main task is to to develop a framework that will simplify the development and deployment of femtocell applications.
Demo 1: IP Access
IP Access showed couple of demo's. The first being Facebook Virtual Fridge Notes Applications and the other Femto-enabled Connected Home Applications. There was some problem with the microphone and also CDMA like interference problems (if someone in the room is shouting, everyone starts shouting and the noice level increase drowns out the useful info) so I diddnt catch the second demo very well.
Demo 2: Motorola
Their demo included Mobile Presence where, when the mobile reaches the Femtozone, different actions are triggered. They also showed how to remotely control TV and other applications through mobile when Femtocells are present.
Demo 4: Ubiquisys, Intrinsyc, Mobica
Demo 6: Airvana
You can also synchronise the Digital Picture frame to your mobile so that whenever the phone comes in the Femtozone, the pictures are uploaded to display automatically.
Demo 7: Alcatel-Lucent
There was a video demo showing how useful Femtocell can be in daily life. For example a person is leaving home but has forgotten to close windows, so he gets a notification just when he is locking the door. Also if some friend comes to your house while you are shopping outside, you do not have to rush back. You can remotely unlock your door for him.
Along with the demo's mentioned above, LG-Nortel was showing their WiMAX Femtocell solution.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
NEC and Ubiquisys to help deploy first IMS based Femtocell Solution
SoftBank, Japan's third placed carrier behind NTT DoCoMo and KDDI, said it will offer 3G femtos from January 2009 using kit from UK-based Ubiquisys and a supporting IMS core from NEC.
Femtocells are supposed to be "zero touch" and easily installed by the users themselves. So, a regulation that mandates sending out an engineer to plug in each and every home access point would kill an operator's femto business case.
The Japanese policy is expected to be changed by the end of the year, which wouldn’t be too soon for Softbank. According to our source, the operator has already installed 20,000 devices, has chosen an NEC Corp. solution -- which uses Ubiquisys Ltd's femtocell -- and is also checking out equipment from Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. Softbank isn't quite ready for a mass market deployment because there are still some technical issues, according to the industry source.
Meantime, NTT DoCoMo Inc. said last week that it was going to use the new HSPA version of Mitsubishi Corp. femtocell for its Home Area service.