Welcome to the June edition of the Basestation e-Newsletter. It has been very encouraging to find such a strong collection of articles popping up in my inbox and on behalf

of us all I would like to thank the authors for the time and effort they have put into writing them.

The last time I prepared this column, 3GSM had just taken place and there was a considerable buzz in Barcelona about Femtocells. The early euphoria and healthy scepticism back in February has been replaced by some serious analysis, technical head scratching and the operators coming off their fences with the result that several field trials are now taking place in Europe, USA and Asia. Issues of security, authentication, billing, frequency agility, upgrading, etc signs of a maturing market proposition, are all being tackled and feature prominently in our next Avren Events conference on Home Access Points and Femtocells in London, July 3-5 and in the follow on events in Dallas on 5th-7th December '07 and London in June 24th-26th '08

Within the wider industry, mobile WiMAX is tackled in several articles as field trials and deployments gather pace. Chip solutions, software radio advances, in-building coverage, and greener basestations are just a few of the other topics awaiting your attention – happy reading.

Will Franks, CTO and co-founder of Ubiquisys talks frankly about his company's view on the femtocell opportunity and the role of the newly formed Femtocell Forum.  more>>  

Much of the growth in the broadband market going forward will come via wireless technologies such as WiMAX, HSDPA, EV-DO and their evolutions.  more>>  

The Femtocell market is entering uncertain waters at the moment. Will there be fruitful proceeds? .  more>>  

Many entities have used the term “4G” to refer to a next-generation technology that delivers much better performance than the current 3G standards. Sprint is referring to its planned Mobile WiMAX launch as a “4G” deployment.  more>>  

Putting a mini cellular base station in the home, which backhauls traffic via the DSL or cable line, looks like an attractive way to make wireless more competitive in the home.  more>>  

This article describes technical parameters in the Remote Radio Head/Node-B combination that can boost the cell receive performance.  more>>  

Network operators strive to achieve reliable and ubiquitous coverage levels across their deployment areas. While reported coverage can be very close to 100%, customer experience often shows a different picture.   more>>  

In a typical system requiring high-speed timing signals a system timing reference is usually derived from either a GPS signal or from a network timing signal in a ‘master timing unit.’  more>>  

Base-station efficiency has been the subject of much recent debate amongst the operators who are increasingly conscious of their environmental impact and the emphasis placed upon this by lobby groups and consumers.  more>>  

The transition from a circuit switched to an all IP delivery method of data sometimes requires mechanisms for the transmission of precise time for synchronization of embedded systems.   more>>  

The arrival of initiatives such as OBSAI and CPRI are setting the pace for the development of optimized, open and more connective hardware.   more>>  

Digital down/up converter (DDC/DUC) sub-systems are among the main digital components of the transmitter/receiver functionality within a base station. A significant portion of the silicon real estate is allocated for these sub-systems.  more>>