Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

Self-Optimizing Networks
Benefits of SON in HSPA and LTE
Networks

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

What is SON ?

Self-organisation is a process where the organisation (constraint,

redundancy) of a system spontaneously increases, that is, without this
increase being controlled by the environment or an encompassing or
otherwise external system (Heylighen, 2009).
Within the vision of SON the operators
have defined the most relevant use cases
for the automation of operational tasks:
typically, those tasks that require significant
manual effort, or tasks that are highly
complex in nature, and are therefore prone
to error. NGMN presented these use cases
to the vendor industry, and 3GPP
standardisation bodies were requested to
develop and stan dardise respective selforganising solutions (3GPP TR32.500,
2011).

With LTE we have a great opportunity to bring the value of SON into our
networks. But the potential and ambition clearly includes legacy networks
NGMN: Next Generation Mobile Networks
such as UMTS and GSM also.
3GPP : 3rd Generation Partnership Project

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

Why SON ?

Why has the vision of self-organising networks gained importance in our industry?
There are two obvious drivers:
cost reduction and increasing
complexity.

Network operators urgently need much more automation in order to efficiently manage large networks consisting
of tens of thousands of base stations with hundreds of settings each. Optimising several network layers
providing a multitude of customer services with high service quality would be highly complex and labour intensive, and
therefore would be very costly without the mechanisms and intelligence in our networks to organise themselves.

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

SON : The new way of optimization

Data Collection
Existing
Approaches

Analysis

Reactive, rare, manual and

Manual
very partial

and labor
intensive, relying on
high expertise

Implementation
Manual

Feedback
Manual validation
or customer
complaints

Cycle takes days to weeks only one size fits all optimization possible

SON

Proactive, frequent,
automatic and
comprehensive

Automatic, in
real time

Automatic
optimization, in near
real time

Instant, focused
and continuous

Cycle takes minutes dynamic optimization, based on changing conditions

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

SON affects the entire life cycle RNPO

Radio Planning and Optimization life cycle

RAN dimensioning
RF propagation modeling
Planning cell sites locations
Planning sites configurations
Supporting sites rollout process
Predictions of expected QoS for
services, devices, locations
Evaluation of changes, new products,
devices, services etc.

New sites integration, commissioning

and initial tuning
Site swapping
Site reparenting
Cluster performance verification and
acceptance
Network expansions integration

Performance KPI monitoring and

improvement
Data Post processing
Troubleshooting
Tuning of RAN software and
hardware parameters
Optimizing RAN resources
efficiency
Network Benchmarking

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

SON affects the entire life cycle RNPO

In the life cycle of a mobile communication network there are many important
reasons to carry out performance measurement for different applications. The main
goal of the network operator is to achieve profit. Therefore, it is very essential to
have many subscribers, good network quality, and low costs. The usage of
performance measurement supports many tasks and processes under these
aspects. With the help of performance monitoring, it is possible to collect
information on:
networks traffic intensity.
traffic distribution (if it is spread out evenly, or concentrated in certain spots).
events happening in certain spots of the network (and how often do they
occur).
planning efficiency (that is, if the instructions are fulfilled, or are there any
additional changes needed).
locations where frequent failures are reported.
subscriber behavior (if it corresponds with the assumed model).

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

SON affects the entire life cycle RNPO

The operator is able to supervise the performance capacity and quality of his
network and increase the subscriber's satisfaction.
Performance monitoring is mainly used for:
Supervision of quality, capacity and performance
Verification of network planning and optimization
Forecasts for future network planning
Error detection and correction
Troubleshooting
Implementing services and features
Customer behavior identification

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

SON and KPI

KPIs are basic network quality indicators for offer processing and field acceptance
tests.
In order to prove that the performance of an operating network matches the
targeted quality, field acceptance tests are carried out. As multiple factors may
influence the performance of an operational network, detailed conditions, under
which network KPIs are valid, must be specified and agreed upon. These include
system performance, network planning and dimensioning, measurement campaign
planning and parameterization.
LTE system architecture was designed to meet the following major goals.
[3GPP25.913]:
Improved system capacity & coverage
High user data rates (peak upload and download rates)
Reduced latency (one-way delay and RTT)
Simplified architecture, IP based transport infrastructure
Superior user experience
Seamless connection to legacy networks (GSM, UMTS, 3GPP2/CDMA)

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

SON and KPI

KPIs are basic network quality indicators for offer processing and field acceptance
tests.
In order to prove that the performance of an operating network matches the
targeted quality, field acceptance tests are carried out. As multiple factors may
influence the performance of an operational network, detailed conditions, under
which network KPIs are valid, must be specified and agreed upon. These include
system performance, network planning and dimensioning, measurement campaign
planning and parameterization.
LTE system architecture was designed to meet the following major goals.
[3GPP25.913]:
Improved system capacity & coverage
High user data rates (peak upload and download rates)
Reduced latency (one-way delay and RTT)
Simplified architecture, IP based transport infrastructure
Superior user experience
Seamless connection to legacy networks (GSM, UMTS, 3GPP2/CDMA)

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

SON: KPI Categories

ITU QoS
Category

3GPP KPI
Category

[ITU-T.E800]

[3GPP32.410 and
3GPP32.450]

Accessibility
Reliability

Accessibility
Reliability

Terminology
Used

Meaningfor LTE Field Network

Performance

Accessibility

Service accessibility, e.g. Attach, or EPS Bearer

Setup Request success rates.

Reliability

Once established, the reliability of the service, e.g.

VoIP call, or EPS bearer drop rates.

Integrity

Throughput, Latency

Throughput, Latency

Promise to deliver the service with a certain quality,

level of conformance. E.g. cell throughput, or user
data rates, packet delay.

Availability

Availability

not used

Relationship between service up and down times,

e.g. cell, or LTE network availability

not defined

Mobility

Mobility

Different mobility related metrics, e.g. hand-over

success or drop rates, latencies.

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

Relationship between SON functions and network parameters

Performance Management
PM

Configuration Management

CM

Coverage Capacity Availability Reliability

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

SON Self-Optimization Cycle

Roadmap for SON standardisation in

3GPP
Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la
Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

Minimisation of Drive Tests

(MDT)

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

The SON idea

ANR

LB

P&P

MRO

CCO

RACHO

Synchronization and Coordination

OSS Ericsson

Huawei

NSN

Multi RAN Vendors

Cisco

ALU

ZTE

Multi RAN Technologies

GSM

UMTS / HSPA

Femto

Small-Cells

LTE / A-LTE

Multiple Technologies & Vendors Offering

ANR : Automatic Neighbor Relation
LB : Load Balancing
P&P : Plug and Play
MRO: Mobility Robustness / Handover Optimization
CCO : Coverage and Capacity Optimization
RACH-O : Random Access Channel (RACH) Optimization

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

c-SON : a common e2e platform

Centralized SON
architecture
Common platform
providing end to
end RAN
management
solution

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

SON ARCHITECTURE ALTERNATIVES

Different SON architecture approaches: Centralized (left), Distributed (center) and

Hybrid (right).

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

SON : Automatic Neighbor Relation (ANR)

Improves KPI.
Brings operational efficiency.
Adapts to network changes.

All
in
Time !

real

Henry Vasquez

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

SON : Automatic Neighbor Relation (ANR)

Improves KPI.
Brings operational efficiency.
Adapts to network changes.

All in real Time

!

Henry Vasquez

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas
Improve QoS - Accessibility KPI.
Increases revenues (more calls and data
traffic.
Save site expansions.

SON :

All in real Time

Load Balancing
!

Henry Vasquez

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

SON : Plug & Play

When adding new cells to the Network, Plug & Play creates a complete neighbor
list for the new sites based on the configured physical distance around the
current cell and the azimuth of the neighboring cells. This initial neighbor list
gives the cell an initial group of adjacent cells for HO from day one. Further
optimization of the neighbor list will be done by the Intra-frequency and Interfrequency neighbor relations modules of the ANR when the site goes live.

Plug & Play in Action

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

Benefits of SON - CONCLUSIONS

Overall, there is no silver bullet, but rather, an optimal
architecture that can simultaneously provide the best possible
performance and simplicity. It is expected that over the next few
years, SON will possibly evolve towards hybridization to manage
the tremendous complexity. Some SON use cases deemed too
complicated will necessitate a supervisory entity at the OSS,
which itself can be multi-vendor, while other SON use cases,
fueled by the industrys IOT efforts, will be implemented without
an OSS involvement. The SON space continues to be dynamic
and deviations from such an architectural pattern may be
influenced by dynamically changing market developments.
Improve KPIs.
Save CAPEX and OPEX.
Dynamic adaptation to demand.

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

Benefits of SON - CONCLUSIONS

Operator requirements

SON features

Automation of NW optimization
Closed loop / Feedback system
Real Time Visibility
Short action cycles
Vendor agnostic
Technology agnostic
Scalability

Diplomado en Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologas de la

Informacin con mencin en Comunicaciones Inalmbricas

MUCHAS
GRACIAS
por su atencin!

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