Femtocell ecosystem validation from end-to-end

An end-to-end femtocell test solution that fully validates the entire ecosystem, including access points and gateways has been developed by Ixia.

The femtocell test solution assesses all network aspects and femtocell devices both individually and as part of an end-to-end system. It provides equipment manufacturers and operators with the ability to test major deployment challenges by emulating any node in the femtocell ecosystem, including user equipment, home eNodeBs (HeNBs), HeNB gateways (HeNB GW), and HeNB management systems.
 
Ixia’s says its femtocell solution addresses all major market challenges, which include scalability, security, mobility, ease of deployment, and interoperability, by emulating and testing all femtocell network devices.

In addition, its real-world subscriber modelling and quality of experience (QoE) measurements provide use case scenarios – proving femtocell designs that are ready to handle high-quality next-generation mobile data services (such as live conversational video).
 
Ixia’s IxCatapult testing solution can emulate UEs, HeNBs, HeNB GWs, HeNB management systems, serving gateways (S-GW), and mobility management entities (MME). It validates the femtocell ecosystem end-to-end (including, HeNB, HeNB gateway, MME, and S-Gateway) or isolates the individual components.

Ixia has been collaborating with Picochip and Continuous Computing to validate Continuous Computing’s Trillium Long Term Evolution (LTE) and femtocell wireless protocol software solutions running on Picochip’s picoArray hardware using Ixia’s IxCatapult test platform.

Femtocells are low-power wireless access points that operate in licensed spectrum to connect standard mobile devices to a mobile operator’s network using residential DSL or cable broadband connections. Femtocells offer many potential benefits to both consumers and operators, including increased performance, better coverage, and traffic offload from congested macro cells.