Utilizing femtocells for Peer-to-Peer file sharing in cellular networks

Abstract

Peer-to-Peer file sharing, computing and communication services are widely used by internet community and thoroughly studied by academia. However, main utilization of such services is in the wired networks due to several significant issues in the wireless world like connectivity, bandwidth, battery, unwillingness of cellular operators, etc. In the recent years, offering femtocell access points to subscribers became very promising business model for cellular operator. It also opens space for a variety of new services at the users premises. In this paper, we propose novel architecture for mobile peer-to-peer file sharing based on the femtocell deployment and describe a role of the femtocell in such scenario. We also describe traditional architecture and previously proposed solutions for mobile P2P. We evaluate these approaches and clearly show that the femtocell plays significant role and moves mobile P2P services into reality. We also discuss several current issues which can be easily solved by this architecture.