Wide area mobile communications over femto-cells

1. A method for hand-off of a mobile User Equipment (UE) across a femto cellular network comprising:

dynamically clustering a plurality of neighboring femto cells in a vicinity of a first femto cell to which a mobile UE is currently attached; and

moving the dynamic cluster of neighboring femto cells across the femto cellular network in accordance with movement of the mobile UE across the femto cellular network.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the mobile UE is pre-authenticated in each of the femto cells in a dynamic cluster by:

creating an authentication message that includes information needed to authenticate and attach the UE to any of the plurality of neighboring femto cells in the cluster; and

forwarding the authenticating message from the first femto cell to which the UE is currently attached to at least one neighboring femto cell in the cluster so that the UE is authenticated by the neighboring femto cell in the cluster without physically entering a geographic area served by the neighboring femto cell.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the authenticating message is forwarded by a first Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) associated with the first femto cell to a second CPE associated with the neighboring femto cell.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein the authenticating message is broadcast by the first CPE to a plurality of second CPEs each associated with respective one of a plurality of neighboring femtocells in a cluster.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the authenticating message is broadcast to the second CPEs using a flooding algorithm.

6. The method of claim 4 wherein the authenticating message is forwarded by the first CPE to the second CPE over a broadband network to which both CPEs are connected.

7. The method of claim 2 wherein the plurality of neighboring femto cells are all N hops or less away from the first femto cell and the authenticating message includes a time to live (TTL) of N hops.

8. The method of claim 2 further comprising:

in response to receipt of the authenticating message by a first neighboring femto cell m<N hops away from the first femto cell in a cluster, attaching the UE to the first neighboring femto cell when the UE physically enters the geographic area served by the first neighboring femto cell without further authentication thereof; and

forwarding the authentication message from the first neighboring femto cell to nearest neighbors of the first femto cell, wherein the TTL included in the authentication message is reset to N, when the TTL is less than N-m.

9. The method of claim 2 further comprising:

in response to receipt of the authenticating message by a first neighboring femto cell 1 hop away from the first femto cell in the cluster, forwarding the authentication message from the first neighboring femto cell to nearest neighbors of the first femto cell within the cluster, wherein the time to live (TTL) included in the authentication message is decremented by 1.

10. The method of claim 2 further comprising broadcasting packets destined for the UE to CPEs associated with neighboring femto cells in the cluster when the UE is no longer attached to the first femto cell in the cluster.

11. The method of claim 10 further comprising receiving a redirect message from a second CPE associated with a neighboring femto cell in a second cluster to which the UE is currently attached, the redirect message instructing a first CPE associated with the first femto cell in the first cluster to terminate the broadcasting of the packets.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein the first CPE forwards packets destined for the UE to the second CPE in response to receipt of the redirect message from the second CPE.

13. The method of claim 3 wherein the first and second CPEs are Edge Convergence Server (ECONS) CPEs.

14. A Customer Premises Equipment (CPE), comprising:

a wireless transceiver for establishing communication with a mobile User Equipment (UE) over a first femto cell to which the femto cell is currently attached;

a network interface for establishing communication with a cellular network; and

a session manager configured to forward over a broadband network an authentication message that includes information needed to authenticate and attach the UE to a plurality of femto cells neighboring the first femto cell so that the UE is authenticated by the neighboring femto cells without physically entering a geographic area served by the neighboring femto cell.

15. The CPE of claim 14 wherein the session manager is configured to broadcast the authenticating message by forwarding the authentication message to the CPEs associated with neighboring femto cells.

16. The CPE of claim 15 wherein the authentication message includes a Time-To-Live (TTL) of N hops, N>2, such that the TTL is decremented by 1 upon being received by the nearest neighbors.

17. The CPE of claim 14 further comprising a topology database configured to store a network topology defined by a series of femto cells that include the plurality of femto cells and one or more macro cells that overlap with the series of femto cells.

18. The CPE of claim 14 further comprising a guest registrar database configured to store identities and security credentials of any UEs already authenticated and granted access to the first femto cell.