Femto Forum Becomes Small Cell Forum
15 February 2012
The Femto Forum today announced it is to be renamed the Small Cell Forum.
The Forum will address all small cells that operate in licensed spectrum, are operator-managed and feature edge-based intelligence – including what have been dubbed femtocells, picocells, microcells and metrocells. It will also support the crossover between small cells and other relevant technologies including: Wi-Fi, cloud RAN (which connects cellular radio to cloud-based intelligence over fibre), Distributed Antenna Systems, as well as macrocells as part of the new heterogeneous network (hetnet) environment.
The role of the Small Cell Forum will be to tackle the practical challenges facing deployment. This includes finding appropriate small cell sites; delivering power and backhaul; managing interactions between small cells, macrocells and other wireless technologies; and effective interoperability and network management. This continues the work of the Femto Forum which has been actively working on small cells outside the home for some time, as well as their interactions with other technologies. Examples of this work include integrated Femto/Wi-Fi devices and networks; enterprise multi-femto architectures; public access small cell interference management; standards and management processes which are generic across all small cell types; and LTE small cell standards for all environments.
“Femtocell technology was originally designed for the home but has since extended into enterprise picocells, urban metrocells and modern microcells for all manner of locations. The core technologies developed by members of the Femto Forum - including Systems on a Chip, provisioning systems, standardised gateways, and other related innovations - lower the cost of licensed band solutions and facilitate easy deployments for all small cell products. As such it is the ‘small cell’ banner that now best represents these technologies,” said Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Small Cell Forum.
