The Femto Forum and the WiMAX Forum announced they have published the first standard to enable WiMAX femtocells.
That means vendors will be able to begin building compatible equipment based on the 802.16e standard and profiles immediately. The WiMAX Forum is expected to begin certification of the devices in early 2011.
As data continues to grow on WiMAX networks (Clearwire announced that its residential customers use on average 7 GB a month), femtocells promise to enhance coverage and capacity inside buildings and enable large data loads to be offloaded onto these in-building base stations and use the fixed broadband connection as backhaul.
The specs include a security framework and enables WiMAX networks to support a large number of access points via standard commercial IPSec-based gateways. The devices also would include self organization network (SON) capabilities to enable automatic configuration, while future revisions will update SON capabilities to include automatic interference management among femtocells and macro base stations.
For more:
- see this telecoms.com article
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