Femtocell Self Organising Networks (SON) for Enterprise: A Commercial Reality

Great to see the lead we set in 2009 on small cell Self Organising Networks (SON) with Cognitive Radio now taking hold in the wider eco-system (Light Reading 11 Feb "MWC Preview: Femtos Go Macro").

I’m sorry to break the news to AirHop and Continuous Computing but we at Ubiquisys already have this technology in commercially deployment for Enterprises, having been awarded Operator commercial contracts back in 2007.

(Do read my previous posts on this subject... 27 Jan 2009, 3 & 27 March 2009 and 17 June 2009.)

The reality is stunning to see. The Self Organising Femto Grids being deployed now have inherited from our commercially live consumer products, the 3 years of optimisation, customisation, robustness, and network / handset IOT undertaken with Mobile Operators. The following gives a glimpse of what we have added to make Enterprise SON effective and practical in the real world:

• Fully automated configuration; air interface and LAN sensing of femtocells and the surrounding macro networks, and sharing of this information between the femtos to allow dynamic radio resource optimisation (including power allocation) and call handover. Also auto selection of spreading codes ensuring no clashes on the grid.

• Peer-to-peer handover between femtocells on the grid so that no central controller is needed.

• Continuous sensing of the RF environment to adapt to changes in the Macro network or the femto grid, such as the addition of an additional femtocell.

• Load balancing so that when single femtocells become heavily loaded (cafeteria effect) they handover active calls to the surrounding femtocells.

• Group provisioning and management.

The full list is long and not something I can share in this blog, but it does hook in to all modules of the femtocell, which is why being in full control of your own software stack (as we are at Ubiquisys) has proven essential to make this work in the real world.

All of this consumer and enterprise functionality is part of our commercially proven Femto-Engine software. 8 and 16 call device variants are available from our OEM Partners.

Ubiquisys at Mobile World Congress 2010

It’s that time of year again. We’re just two weeks away from the start of this year’s Mobile World Congress and it’s shaping up to be a great one for Ubiquisys.

I will be participating in a panel discussion, Long Term Revolution: Accelerating 4G Deployment with LTE Femtocells, on the Tuesday at 2:00pm, talking about how LTE femtocells can accelerate the deployment of 4G. We’ll also be speaking on the FemtoZone and participating in the Femto Forum’s media breakfast on the Tuesday.

In the Ubiquisys hospitality suite we’ll be demonstrating a number of new innovations in femtocell technology to our customers and partners – I’ll give you all the details on this in a forthcoming post.

Femtocells powered by our Femto-Engine software will be on display on the stands of many of our partners including NEC and also at the FemtoZone product showcase. They will also be on show at the UKTI stand where they will be providing multi-stream media in a demonstration with the BBC.

If you’re in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress this year please drop by to one of these demos and speaking sessions. We look forward to seeing you there.