LTE Security, Second Edition

Chapter 13

Security for Home Base Station Deployment

To allow for a more efficient usage of the available spectrum, and to allow customer specific deployments (e.g. closed subscriber groups (CSGs) managed by the hosting party (HP) of the base station), an extension to the Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN) was specified for base stations serving very small cells. Their coverage is comparable to a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) access point and they are deployed similarly within customer premises. These ‘femto’ base stations serving ‘femto cells’ are called Home NodeB (HNB), as they are a home version of macro NodeBs. Similarly, an extension to the Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN) was specified with femto base stations called Home eNodeB (HeNB). The service requirements for both types of home base station are specified in [TS22.220]. The technical report [TR23.830] handles architectural aspects of home base stations. The normative text derived from this report is not contained in a separate document, but distributed over the applicable Evolved Packet System (EPS)–related specifications.

Support of the standardization work in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) comes from the Small Cell Forum (SCF) [SCF], which evolved from the former Femto Forum (FF) [FF]. This is a nonprofit organization promoting small cell technologies (including femto cells) world-wide to improve coverage, capacity and services delivered by mobile networks. ...