This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art, which may be related to various aspects of the present invention that are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present invention. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
A macrocell is a cell in a mobile phone network that provides radio coverage served by a cellular base station, namely a NodeB in a universal mobile telecommunication system (UMTS) network, also called a macro base station. It is adapted to connect cellular handsets, also called User Equipment or UE, to a mobile network. The area covered by a base station is called a coverage area. When a UE is located in a cell, it can connect to the base station.
A femtocell, also called an access point base station, a Home Node B or a femto base station, is a small cellular base station that is installed in the indoor environment. A femtocell is adapted to cover a much lower cell range than a macrocell. The cell size covered by a femtocell is also called a femtocell hereinafter. A typical use of a femtocell is inside a building to cover areas that are not reached by a macrocell. A mobile operator provides a plurality of macrocells and femtocells. A femtocell base station is functionally similar to a macro base station. It transmits and receives cellular radio signal to/from the mobile handset, and communicates to the mobile network. As such, the femtocell needs to be configured and managed by the mobile operator.
The configuration items for the macro base stations includes very detailed and specific items, including radio physical layer and radio resource control related information. The radio resource control configuration is specified in the 3GPP 25.331 standard, version 8.7.0 (2009-06) on 3rd Generation Partnership Project; Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; Radio Resource Control (RRC); Protocol Specification (Release 8), and noted 25.331 or RRC specification hereinafter.
That information determines the behavior of the base station. The femtocell being also a cellular base station, it requires the same set of configuration items for the proper operation.
In the traditional macrocell, the total number of the cells the mobile operator manages is relatively small, in order of hundreds to a few thousands depending on the system size. On the other hand, the number of managed femtocells is higher, in the order of millions, due to the nature of being a consumer CPE device with small coverage to be deployed in the indoor environment. This number of managed femtocells renders the configuration much more complex for the mobile operator.