The Third Generation Partnership Project 2, a 3G specification-setting project comprising North American and Asian equipment manufacturers and carriers, recently announced it published comprehensive specifications for femtocell devices that incorporate CDMA2000 1X and HRPD radio access technologies.

The CDMA Development Group is a trade association that aims at fostering the worldwide development, implementation and use of CDMA2000 and other complementary wireless solutions. Meanwhile, the Femto Forum (News - Alert) is an organization that promotes the wide-scale adoption of femtocells, low-power wireless access points that operate in licensed spectrum to connect standard mobile devices to a mobile operator’s network using residential DSL or cable broadband connections.

Describing all aspects of a Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert)/IP Multimedia System-based femtocell architecture for highly-scalable deployment of femtocells, the specifications devise a number of ways in which the enterprises can provide voice, multimedia, and data services to existing CDMA2000 1X and HRPD mobile devices.

Additionally, they allow the integration of existing mobile devices, enhanced femtocell-aware mobile devices, femtocell devices, security gateways and femtocell convergence servers from multiple vendors.

The new specifications offer Enhanced System Selection features for improved battery life, faster femtocell and macrocell system acquisition, improved handoff between the femtocell and macrocell system, and femtozone awareness when CDMA2000 femtocells are deployed in order to support capabilities for new mobile devices that are femto-aware.

Having a track record of various successful Market Representation Partnerships with the CDMA Development Group or ‘CDG’ and the Femto Forum, 3GPP2 has initiated the new specifications to provide the basic building blocks for femtozone services that have been pioneered in the Femto Forum, including Local IP Access and Remote IP Access.

The 3GPP2 specifications for femtocell devices offer extensive support for LIPA, so that packet data traffic can be directly offloaded from femtocells to customers’ home networks, corporate intranets, or to the public Internet. The documentation also includes a RIPA capability to allow mobile devices to connect to the user’s IP network at home and exchange IP data with their home network via a secure remote tunnel, when mobile devices are operating outside of the femtocell subsystem. For example, it might help the user to reach a printer, computer, or media server in his home network while he is receiving EVDO data service via the macrocellular network.

Earlier this month, Tatara Systems (News - Alert), a provider of SIP-based network integration of femtocells, announced the adoption of its SIP-based convergence architecture by the 3GPP2 standards body as the CDMA2000 1x Femtocell (News - Alert) Network standard.