Femtocell Based Gateway Extends Indoor Mobile Coverage

Ikanos Communications and Global Wireless Technologies have announced that they are collaborating together on a new femtocell-based VDSL2 residential gateway platform. 

A femtocell is a low power cellular base station designed for use in residential environments. It connects into the mobile operator's network via broadband. Using a femtocell allows mobile companies to extend service coverage inside of homes and in areas where access would be limited or unavailable. 

 

A mobile phone in range of the femtocell at home automatically detects and uses the femtocell in preference to the outdoor cell sites. The GlobalWireless femtocell base station combines with Ikanos' (News - Alert) (News - Alert) Fusiv Vx180 integrated gateway processor to extend mobile coverage indoors.
 

Susan Elliott, director of business development at GlobalWireless Technologies said, "By integrating the Vx180 gateway processor with our UAP 104 femtocell, we are able to provide complete residential gateway functionality to the market via a single solution."

 

Company officials said Ikanos' Fusiv Vx180 gateway processor supports all current VDSL2 profiles. Further they added that the Vx180 reduces space and power requirements by combining Ikanos' industry VDSL2 customer premises equipment (CPE) PHY and its Fusiv network processor architecture onto a single chip.

 

Official sources said that the Vx180 combines accelerator processor (AP) engines for data path functions with a MIPS- based CPU core, so that the maximum possible main CPU processing power is preserved for customer applications. 

 

"By integrating with femtocell technologies, Ikanos is enabling reliable in-home mobile service that expands beyond triple play," said Mitch Kahn, vice president of marketing at Ikanos.

 

Describing the features, company officials said the GlobalWireless' femtocell (UAP(TM) 104) application is a home gateway that not only improves the indoor cellular coverage but also offers increased service options, such as single phone and number for all calls as well as the potential for landline replacement. 

 

GlobalWireless’s multi-standard platform offers both a universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) and code division multiple access (CDMA) solution to mobile operators, officials added.

 

Global Wireless Technologies LLC is a designer and developer of flexible and cost effective wireless solutions for the cellular access point market. GlobalWireless' high capacity, multi-standard residential and enterprise class cellular access point solution extends network coverage for existing and planned cellular coverage for operators over both the UMTS and CDMA networks. 

 

Ikanos Communications, Inc. is a provider of advanced broadband semiconductor and software products for the digital home.

 

Nitya Prashant is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Nitya's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Tim Gray