Picochip puts 3G base station on USB
Squeezing base station architecture onto tiny devices shifts network economics again
Published: 7 January, 2011
READ MORE: PicoChip Designs | Semiconductor | Dongle/Datacard | Femtocell
The femtocell has attracted attention as an in-home device for improving indoor signal strength and offloading macro network traffic. However, its more disruptive potential will be realized when its miniaturized approach to base station design is applied to a wider range of products. Already, operators and silicon providers are demonstrating outdoor, public access base stations using a femtocell architecture, with the ability to revolutionize cellular network economics. Now femto chipset leader Picochip has gone in the opposite direction, squeezing the architecture into a dongle-sized device.
Putting a 3G base station on a USB device has highly disruptive implications for the cost and flexibility of building a wireless network. Although it is at the demonstration stage - shown off at the CES show - Picochip says USB 3.0, combined with new developments in signal processing and semiconductors, will make a USB femtocell a viable product within months.
Also in the femtocell world, the Femto Forum has published a study, by research firm Parks Associates, into consumer attitudes to the technology. It questioned 6,100 people across six countries (China, Germany, Japan, Spain, the UK and US), and found that nearly 60% of broadband households with cellphones are interested in femtocells.
The main attraction remains improved voice quality indoors, a factor that would prevent many consumers from defecting to another operator, the survey found. It discovered that
quality of in-building voice is not only the chief driver for femtocell adoption, but also the single most important criterion by which consumers rate their cellco. An improvement in voice signal could keep up to 42% of respondents from changing operator, while 18% would be willing to change to a cellco with a femtocell offering. Also, 36% of consumers in multicarrier households might churn in order to consolidate with a single provider offering femtocells.
Although femtocells and Wi-Fi are often seen as either/or solutions to indoor coverage, the interest in femtos was heavily weighted to heavy users of mobile Wi-Fi - 83% found them appealing.
Respondents in China had the highest awareness of femtocell technology and also found it most attractive, with 81% saying it was very or extremely appealing. Japan was the only market in which the leading driver for femtocells was not improved voice coverage but rather faster data speeds.
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Posted by keithday on Friday 7th January, 2011
Late last year SFR in France said it would be providing a USB 3G femto as an accessory to its latest NeufBox home gateway in 2011.
A dongle-sized femto that would plug into a laptop would require real-time interference management, which at the moment is only provided by Ubiquisys femto-engine software. Other femtocells only self-configure at start-up, raising the risk that a wifi-connected laptop will be carried outdoors, potentially causing interference problems for macro users.
More on today's USB femto products on our blog: http://ubiquisys.com/femtocell-blog/ubiquisys-snap-on-femtocell-device-a-new-way-to-integrate-with-your-home-gateway/