Femtocell Network Architecture and Signaling Protocol

Over the course of the last twelve months, the wireless market has experienced a tremendous amount of excitement around femtocells, driven primarily by frustration over bad wireless call coverage within home and/or office environments. As a technology, a femtocell is a fairly simple concept of extending the 3G/2G wireless 'last mile' into the indoor arena, through which current wireless infrastructure—base-stations and/or Node Bs—finds it difficult to penetrate. This coverage extension is achieved by putting a new device called a Femto Access Point (FAP) within consumers' proximity and leveraging their public internet connectivity (cable, DSL, or fiber) for backhaul. FAPs will be indoor and low-cost.