A picocell is a small cellular

base station Base station (or base radio station, BS) is – according to the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) Radio Regulations (RR) – a " land station in the land mobile service." A base station is called '' node B'' in 3G, '' eNB'' in L ...

typically covering a small area, such as in-building (offices, shopping malls, train stations, stock exchanges, etc.), or more recently in-aircraft. In cellular networks, picocells are typically used to extend coverage to indoor areas where outdoor signals do not reach well, or to add network capacity in areas with very dense phone usage, such as train stations or stadiums. Picocells provide coverage and capacity in areas difficult or expensive to reach using the more traditional

macrocell A macrocell or macrosite is a cell in a mobile phone network that provides radio coverage served by a high power cell site (tower, antenna or mast). Generally, macrocells provide coverage larger than microcell. The antennas for macrocells are m ...

approach.

Overview

In cellular wireless networks, such as

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a family of standards to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks, as used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and Mobile broadband modem, mobile broadba ...

, the picocell base station is typically a low-cost, small (typically the size of a ream of

A4 paper ISO 216 is an International Organization for Standardization, international standard for paper sizes, used around the world except in North America and parts of Latin America. The standard defines the "A", "B" and "C" series of paper sizes, wh ...

), reasonably simple unit that connects to a base station controller (BSC). Multiple picocell 'heads' connect to each BSC: the BSC performs radio resource management and hand-over functions, and aggregates data to be passed to the

mobile switching centre Network switching subsystem (NSS) (or GSM core network) is the component of a GSM system that carries out call out and mobility management functions for mobile phones roaming on the network of base stations. It is owned and deployed by mobile ...

(MSC) or the gateway

GPRS General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), also called 2.5G, is a mobile data standard on the 2G cellular communication network's Global System for Mobile Communications, global system for mobile communications (GSM). Networks and mobile devices wit ...

support node ( GGSN). Connectivity between the picocell heads and the BSC typically consists of in-building wiring. Although originally deployed systems (1990s) used plesiochronous digital hierarchy (PDH) links such as E1/T1 links, more recent systems use

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

cabling. Aircraft use satellite links. More recent work has developed the concept towards a head unit containing not only a picocell, but also many of the functions of the BSC and some of the MSC. This form of picocell is sometimes called an access point base station or 'enterprise

femtocell In telecommunications, a femtocell is a small, low-power cellular base station, typically designed for use in a home or small business. A broader term which is more widespread in the industry is ''small cell'', with ''femtocell'' as a subset. It t ...

'. In this case, the unit contains all the capability required to connect directly to the Internet, without the need for the BSC/MSC infrastructure. This is a potentially more cost-effective approach. Picocells offer many of the benefits of "

small cell Small means of insignificant size. Small may also refer to: Science and technology * SMALL, an ALGOL-like programming language * ''Small'' (journal), a nano-science publication * <small>, an HTML element that defines smaller text Arts and ...

s" (similar to femtocells) in that they improve data throughput for mobile users and increase capacity in the mobile network. In particular, the integration of picocells with macrocells through a heterogeneous network can be useful in seamless hand-offs and increased mobile data capacity. Picocells are available for most cellular technologies including GSM, CDMA, UMTS and LTE from manufacturers including ip.access, ZTE, Huawei and Airwalk.

Range

Typically the range of a

microcell A microcell is a cell in a mobile phone network served by a low power cellular base station (tower), covering a limited area such as a mall, a hotel, or a transportation hub. A microcell is usually larger than a picocell, though the distinctio ...

is less than two kilometers wide, a picocell is 200 meters or less, and a femtocell is on the order of 10 meters, although AT&T calls its product, with a range of , a "microcell". AT&T uses "AT&T 3G MicroCell" as a trademark and not necessarily the "microcell" technology, however.

References

Mobile telecommunications 9. http://defenseelectronicsmag.com/site-files/defenseelectronicsmag.com/files/archive/rfdesign.com/mag/407rfdf1.pdf {{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160812180031/http://defenseelectronicsmag.com/site-files/defenseelectronicsmag.com/files/archive/rfdesign.com/mag/407rfdf1.pdf , date=2016-08-12

Overview

Range

See also

References