In telecommunications, a femtocell is a small, low-power cellular base station, typically designed for use in a home or small business. A broader term which is more widespread in the industry is small cell, with femtocell as a subset. It connects to the service provider’s network via broadband (such as DSL or cable); current designs typically support two to four active mobile phones in a residential setting, and eight to 16 active mobile phones in enterprise settings. A femtocell allows service providers to extend service coverage indoors or at the cell edge, especially where access would otherwise be limited or unavailable. Although much attention is focused onWCDMA, the concept is applicable to all standards, including GSM, CDMA2000, TD-SCDMA, WiMAX and LTE solutions.
For a mobile operator, the attractions of a femtocell are improvements to both coverage and capacity, especially indoors. Consumers benefit from improved coverage and potentially better voice quality and battery life. Depending on the carrier they may also be offered more attractive tariffs, e.g., discounted calls from home.
Femtocells are an alternative way to deliver the benefits of fixed-mobile convergence (FMC). The distinction is that most FMC architectures require a new (dual-mode) handset which works with existing unlicensed spectrum home/enterprise wireless access points, while a femtocell-based deployment will work with existing handsets but requires installation of a new access point that uses licensed spectrum.
Many operators have launched femtocell service, including Vodafone, SFR, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, Verizon, Zain, Mobile TeleSystems, and Orange.
In 3GPP terminology, a Home Node B (HNB) is a 3G femtocell. A Home eNode B (HeNB) is an LTE femtocell.
Typically the range of a standard base station may be up to 35 kilometres (22 mi), a microcell is less than two kilometers wide, a picocell is 200 meters or less, and a femtocell is on the order of 10 meters,[1] although AT&T calls its product, with a range of 40 feet (12 m), a „microcell“.[2] AT&T uses „AT&T 3G MicroCell“ as a trade mark and not necessarily the „microcell“ technology, however.[3]
