A novel architecture for enhancing communication in dead zones using femtocells

Femtocells are small, low-power cellular base stations used mainly for office and home purposes. Femtocells use the IP network as the backhaul architecture instead of the conventional cellular network infrastructure. Places where there is no macrocell coverage are called as dead zones. Lack of proper data transmission capability and poor signal strength are some of the issues that are experienced in a dead zone. Femtocells will be cost effective when compared to the installation of cellular base stations in dead zones. In dead zones, femtocells can be used to provide high data rate services, provided there is broadband connectivity. This paper proposes an architecture that enables communication in places where there is no macrocell coverage and no broadband connectivity. To enable communication, this paper introduces a road-gateway and proposes an architecture for communication using femtocells (HeNB), road-gateways (RGW) and femto gateways (HeNB-GW).