Integrating Wi-Fi and Femtocells a Feasibility Study Based on a Techno Economic Comparison of the Two Technologies
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Integrating Wi-Fi and Femtocells A feasibility study based on a techno economic comparison of the two technologies RAZVAN POPESCU Master of Science Thesis Stockholm, Sweden 2013 Integrating Wi-Fi and Femtocells A feasibility study based on a techno economic comparison of the two technologies Student Razvan Popescu Supervisor Ashraf Awadelakrim Widaa Ahmed Examiner Jan I Markendahl Wireless@KTH School of Information and Communication Technology, KTH-Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden June 2013 Abstract At the end of 2009 mobile industry reached an inevitable milestone; the aggregated mobile data traffic exceeded voice traffic in the mobile networks. Starting with this point, data consumption has been continuously increasing and there are no signs that this behaviour will change in the future. For this reason mobile operators face nowadays a new paradox: they have to invest massively in their networks in order to sustain the increasing traffic while revenues are not expected to rise. This means that in order to survive, operators have to add extra capacity in a cost-efficient way. Using indoor solutions and mobile data offloading has been considered one right approach for solving this issue. While indoor solutions like Distributed Antenna Systems and repeaters have been used in the mobile networks for some time now, data offloading represents a relatively newcomer in the mobile industry. Using this concept, data traffic generated by mobile devices is moved towards alternative networks releasing the congestion in the operators’ macrocell layers. Among indoor solutions, two technologies stepped forward, Wi-Fi and Femtocells. This MSc thesis studies these two technologies, making a techno- economic comparison between them with respect on QoS level, interference, security and capacity-cost ratio. Furthermore, the possibility of integrating the two into one single solution is investigated considering the changes in the ecosystem for three use-case scenarios, residential, enterprise and public venues. This study reveals that an integrated Femto-Wi-Fi solution would benefit from the strong points each technology presents, being a suitable solution for the current and future congestion problems mobile networks present. Moreover, deployments of such integrated solutions are expected to be driven out mainly by mobile operators, especially in enterprise and public- venues environments, since this actors’ category would benefit the most from using such a technology. iii Acknowledgement I would like to thank and offer my sincere gratitude to Associate Professor Jan Markendahl for his continuous support and most of all for offering me the opportunity to enter this innovative domain of techno- economic research. I am also very grateful to my supervisor, Ashraf Awadelakrim Widaa Ahmed, for his guidance and advices and for allowing me develop my work in an independent way. Special thanks goes to all who accepted to offer me some minutes of their time and answer my questions; Benny A Ekman, Kenneth Karlberg, Nick Johnson, Geir Ove Jenssen, Ronny Haraldsvik, Alvaro Prieto, Johan Terve and Nick Papadoglou. Thank you for your time and for offering me a highly valuable insight over the industry without which this work wouldn’t have been possible. I am very grateful to the entire team inside Communication Systems department for offering such a friendly environment and especially to Amirhossein Ghanbari who always had an answer for my questions, though not always the right one. Last but not least, I would like to thank to my family and my girlfriend Nicole, for offering me the opportunity to study abroad and for their continuous encouragement and support. Razvan Popescu Stockholm, 2013 v Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgement .............................................................................................. v List of tables ...................................................................................................... ix List of figures ..................................................................................................... x Chapter 1: Introduction ..................................................................................... 1 1.1 Background .............................................................................................. 1 1.2 Problem motivation.................................................................................. 3 Chapter 2: Related Work and Contribution ...................................................... 5 Chapter 3: Methodology .................................................................................... 9 Chapter 4: Background .................................................................................... 13 4.1 Femtocells ............................................................................................... 13 4.1.1 Network access technologies ............................................................ 13 4.2 Wi-Fi ...................................................................................................... 15 4.2.1 What is Wi-Fi and how it works? ................................................... 16 4.2.2 Wi-Fi standards ............................................................................... 17 Chapter 5: Comparative study ........................................................................ 19 5.1 Quality of Service ................................................................................... 19 5.1.1 Qos in Wi-Fi .................................................................................... 19 5.1.2 QoS for femtocells ........................................................................... 20 5.1.3 QoS for Integrated Femto-Wi-FI .................................................... 21 5.2 Capacity calculation ............................................................................... 21 5.2.1 Femtocell deployment ..................................................................... 22 5.2.2 Wi-Fi deployment............................................................................ 23 5.2.3 IFW deployment ............................................................................. 24 5.3 Deployment cost ..................................................................................... 24 5.4 Security .................................................................................................. 25 5.4.1 Femtocell security ........................................................................... 25 5.4.2 Wi-Fi security .................................................................................. 27 5.4.3 IFW Security ................................................................................... 29 5.5 Interference ............................................................................................. 29 5.5.1 Femtocells’ interference issues ......................................................... 29 5.5.2 Wi-Fi’s interference issues ............................................................... 32 5.5.3 IFW’s interference ........................................................................... 33 5.6 Technical comparison conclusion ........................................................... 33 vii Chapter 6: Economic and business relations implications when using an IFW solution ............................................................................................................. 35 6.1 Main actors ............................................................................................. 35 6.2 Residential Case ..................................................................................... 37 6.2.2 IFW service and backhaul offered by MNO ................................... 38 6.2.3 IFW service and backhaul offered by ISP ...................................... 39 6.2.3 Residential conclusion ..................................................................... 39 6.3 Enterprise Case ...................................................................................... 40 6.3.1 MNO for services with/without ISP for backhaul .......................... 40 6.3.2 3rd party for services and ISP for backhaul ..................................... 41 6.3.3 Enterprise conclusion ...................................................................... 42 6.4 Public hot-spots and premium venue locations ..................................... 42 6.5 Conclusions and further considerations ................................................. 43 Chapter 7: Conclusion and future work ........................................................... 45 7.1 The research questions ........................................................................... 46 7.2 Final words ............................................................................................. 47 7.3 Future work ............................................................................................ 47 Bibliography ..................................................................................................... 49 Appendix .......................................................................................................... 55 viii List of tables Table 1 Wi-Fi standards .................................................................................. 18 Table 2 FAP deployment ................................................................................. 22 Table 3 Throughput