Architecture for enabling seamless communication in dead zones of lte femtocell networks

Abstract

Femtocells are small, low-power cellular base stations used to provide communication in places where macrocells are not able to facilitate communication. Femtocells are self-organising networks. In the LTE-femtocell architecture, the femtocells are known as Home evolved NodeB (HeNB). The HeNBs are connected to the core network through the Home evolved NodeB-Gateway (HeNB-GW). Thus, the HeNB-GW acts as a bridge between the HeNBs and the core network. All the communication and handover messages between the HeNBs are handled by the HeNB-GW and the Mobility Management Entity (MME). Dead zones are places where there is no macrocell connectivity. Hilly regions and dense forests are some examples for dead zones. User equipment get disconnected from macrocells whenever they enter dead zones. Earlier, femtocells have been used to provide communication in dead zones to some extent. All the communication and handover request/response messages between the femtocells have been handled by the HeNB-GW and the MME. This requires each and every femtocell installed in dead zones to be connected directly to the HeNB-GW. But, connecting each and every femtocell directly to the HeNB-GW is not an easy task in dead zones. This thesis proposes an architecture to enable communication in dead zones even when it is impossible to connect each femtocell directly to the HeNB-GW. The work presented in this thesis aims at (1) introducing an architecture to enable seamless communication in dead zones, (2) improving the quality of service of the proposed architecture and (3) providing secure communication between the user equipment in the proposed architecture newline