Testing Wireless Networks Featured Article

For most people, mobile connectivity is an absolute must. Unfortunately, the recent advances in telecommunications technologies and next-generation networks are still not enough to provide everyone with the wireless coverage that they require.

Those who work or reside in areas where wireless coverage is spotty don't have to fall off the grid, however. Femtocell (News - Alert) technology can help fill in the gaps left by traditional wireless deployments.

Femtocells are low-power access points that can be installed in residential locations or businesses to provide end users with wireless coverage via a DSL or broadband connection. This technology enables people to use their smartphone or mobile device even if their home of office is located in a remote area. Femtocells (News - Alert) have been proven to boost upload and download performances, enhance coverage and improve traffic offload from congested macro cells.

As one can imagine, femtocell adoption is rapidly increasing alongside the growing demand for wireless connectivity. Joe Zeto, senior manager of market development at Ixia (News - Alert), a leading solutions provider that specializes in testing wireless networks, recently authored a blog post that details the recent growth pattern of femtocell technology, its benefits and the obstacles that it must overcome to be fully viable.

The femtocell market is expected to exceed 45 million units within the five years, said Zeto, citing a recent report from ABI Research. It is anticipated that adoption rates will increase drastically over that period due to scheduled mass market deployments by several Tier 1 mobile operators, including Vodafone, T-Mobile and Telefonica (News - Alert). The number of deployments has nearly tripled in the last year alone.

To become completely viable, femtocells must overcome a number of barriers, Zeto says, which include scalability, security, mobility, ease of deployment and interoperability.

"Full validation of these areas prevents product and service delays that might ultimately impact small cell market growth," he notes. "Assessing all network aspects and femtocell devices both individually and as part of an end-to-end system gives equipment manufacturers and operators the ability to test all deployment challenges."

Zeto says that all nodes in the femtocell ecosystem need to be tested. Home eNodeB gateway scalability must be validated on several dimensions, such as raw throughput, connections per second and transaction per second with security enabled. Operators also need to validate mobility between femtocells and macro cells, as well as fete positive and negative handover conditions to guarantee a strong user experience.

He adds that operators need to provide consumers with a number of access points to chose from, all of which need to be compatible with their HeNB gateway. Zeto believes that operators need to evaluate their likelihood of suffering security attacks as well as appraise the performance of IPSec encryption and ciphering technologies.

"To be viable economically, residential femtocells must have self-organizing network (SON) capability to avoid site specific radio planning and optimization," Zeto writes. "The functionality and operation of the HeNB and HeNB management system to the TR-069 standard is critical."

Beecher Tuttle is a TMCnet contributor. He has extensive experience writing and editing for print publications and online news websites. He has specialized in a variety of industries, including health care technology, politics and education. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Stefanie Mosca