Product Description - Cisco ASR 5000 Series Administration Manual

▀ Product Description

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 an 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 (e.g. Iu-CS/PS, A1/2, A10/11, R6). In this approach services and mobility are completely transparent to CN
elements (e.g. MSC, xGSN, PDSN/HA, ASN GW).
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
▄ Cisco ASR 5000 Series 3G Home NodeB Gateway Administration Guide
HNB Gateway in UMTS Network
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