Product Description
The Home NodeB
Gateway is the HNB network access concentrator used to connect the Home
NodeBs (HNBs)/Femto Access Point (FAP) to access the UMTS
network through HNB Access Network. It aggregates Home Node-B or
Femto Access Points to a single network element and then integrates them
into the Mobile Operators Voice, Data and Multimedia networks.
Femtocell is an important
technology and service offering that enables new Home and Enterprise
service capabilities for Mobile Operators and Converged Mobile Operators
(xDSL/Cable/FFTH plus Wireless). The Femtocell
network consists of a plug-n-play customer premise device generically
called a Home NodeB (HNB) with limited range radio access in home
or Enterprise. The HNB will auto-configure itself with the Operators network
and the user can start making voice, data and multimedia calls.
The figure given describes
a high level view of UMTS network with Femtocell and HNB-GW.
Figure 1. HNB-GW Deployment in 3G UMTS Network
Once a secure tunnel
has been established between the HNB and the SeGW and the HNB has
been configured by the HMS, the Operator has to connect the Femtocell
network to their Core Network and services. There are several interworking
approaches to Circuit Switch (CS) and Packet Switch (PS) domains.
One approach is to make the Femtocell network appear as a standard Radio
Access Network (RAN) to the Core Network. In addition to the HNB,
SeGW and HMS the RAN approach requires a network element generically
called a Femto Gateway (FGW/HNB-GW). The HNB-GW provides
interworking and aggregation of large amount of Femtocell sessions
toward standard CN interfaces (IuPS/IuCS). In this approach
services and mobility are completely transparent to CN elements
(e.g. MSC, xGSN).
The other approach is
to connect the Femtocell to an IMS Network to provide CS services
to subscribers when on the Femtocell and deploy a new network element
generically called a Convergence Server to provide service continuity
and mobility over standard interfaces at the MSC layer (e.g GSM-MAP,
IS-41). These two approaches are clearly different in how CS based services
and mobility are achieved.
In accordance with 3GPP
standard, the HNB-GW provides following functions and procedures
in UMTS core network:
IMPORTANT:
HNB Access Network Elements
This section
provides the brief description and functionality of various network
elements involved in the UMTS Femto access network. The HNB access
network includes the following functional entities:
Home NodeB
A Home NodeB
(HNB) is the a customer premise equipment that offers Uu interface
to UE and IuH over IPSec tunnel to HNB-GW for accessing UMTS Core
Network (PS or CS) in Femtocell access network.
HNB Gateway (HNB-GW)
The HNB-GW provides
the access to Femto user to UMTS core network. It acts as an access gateway
to HNB and concentrates connections from a large amount of HNBs.
The IuH interface is used between HNB and HNB-GW and HNB-GW connects
with the Core Networks (CS or PS) using the generic Iu (IuCS or
IuPS) or Gn interface.
Licenses
The HNB-GW is a licensed
Cisco product. Separate session and feature licenses may be required.
Contact your Cisco account representative for detailed information
on specific licensing requirements. For information on installing
and verifying licenses, refer to the Managing License Keys section
of the Software Management Operations chapter
in the System Administration Guide.
Platform Requirements
The HNB-GW service runs
on a Cisco® ASR 5x00 chassis running StarOS Rel. 10 or
later. The chassis can be configured with a variety of components
to meet specific network deployment requirements. For additional
information, refer to the Installation
Guide for the chassis and/or contact your Cisco account representative.
