FEMTOCELL TIMING SYNCHRONIZATION USING MOBILE DEVICE MESSAGING

摘要

Methods, systems, and devices are described for femtocells to retrieve neighboring macrocells' timing information, using messages from mobile devices that are associated with the relevant macrocell In some cases, detection of the femtocell, such as through an out-of-band detection, may trigger the mobile device to determine timing information with respect to the macrocell and/or the femtocell. In some embodiments, the mobile device associated with the macrocell may be in active state and looking for a candidate femtocell for handover. The femtocell may receive this timing information from the mobile device and utilize it to synchronize with the neighboring macrocell. Embodiments may address fine timing synchronization and tracking for asynchronous and quasi-synchronous wide-area wireless networks (e.g., 3GPP/3GPP2 variants like UMTS, LTE, CDMA 1x, 1x EV-DO, etc).