This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been

fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LCOMM.2018.2867846, IEEE
Communications Letters
1

Swapped Sectors Detection on Multi-Layer

Networks
Omar Kaddoura, Juan J. Sánchez-Sánchez, Inmaculada Serrano, Raquel Barco

Abstract—A common fault in mobile communications networks

is the presence of swapped sectors. This is, coverage areas of two
or more co-located sectors are swapped. The reason of swapped
sectors existence is the interchange of feeders’ connections from
baseband units or radio units to antennas’ ports. In particular,
this problem has a greater impact on multi-layer networks
where a higher number of feeder connections are performed
per site. In this paper, a method is presented to automatically
detect swapped sectors using mobility statistics on multi-layer
networks. Simulations have been carried out, proving that the
proposed method outperforms other state-of-the-art methods. (a) Swapped pair in a two-layer (b) Rotated trio in a three-layer
Furthermore, the proposed method has been validated in three site site
different real LTE networks.
Figure 1: Swapped sectors scenarios in multi-layer sites
Index Terms—Swapped sectors, multi-layer networks, han-
dovers, mobility, Self-Organising Networks
A, B and Γ triangles represent the directions that sectorized
cells are expected to point towards. Superindex ’ corresponds
I. I NTRODUCTION
to the lowest frequency layer, superindex ” corresponds to the

D URING the design phase of mobile communications net-

works, the coverage area of a cell is defined based on its
available resources and the maximum number of simultaneous
users that are expected to be managed. Despite this, there
might be situations in which the expected resources to be
demanded by users are higher than what a single cell is able
to provide. To overcome these situations, networks may be
designed so that several cells provide service to the same
areas. Particularly, these cells use different carrier frequencies
to eliminate inter-cell interference. Thus, networks may be
composed of different layers where all cells in a given layer
use the same carrier frequency. This concept of multi-layer
network has grown in significance in 5G standards, since they
not only improve networks capacity but also boost user data
rates (e.g., by means of multi-connectivity [1]).
Since the rollout process of a mobile communications net-
work is prone to errors as a consequence of human factor, the
deployment of a network could differ from the configuration
resulted from the design phase. One of these errors is the case
in which antennas are not installed correctly, thus affecting
the coverage area of the cell. Particularly, a cell could be
radiating through the wrong antenna due to the erroneous
connection of feeders from baseband units or radio units to
antennas. This problem is known as swapped sectors since
feeders connections are swapped and so do cells’ coverage
areas. Especially, multi-layer networks are more likely to have
swapped sectors than single-layer networks since they have a
higher number of cells per site which implies having a higher
number of feeder connections.
Fig. 1 depicts two examples of swapped sectors scenarios in
multi-layer tri-sectorized sites. In this figure, A, B and Γ cor-
respond to the sectors the site has been divided into. Besides,
second highest frequency layer and superindex ”’ corresponds
to the highest frequency layer. Thus, cells are defined by the
combination of sectors and layers (e.g., Sector B and layer ”
defines cell B”).
In Fig. 1a, a swapped pair scenario in a two-layer site is
represented. In this scenario, cells in the lowest frequency
layer for sectors B and Γ are swapped since the expected area
served by Γ’ is actually served by B’ and vice versa. Similarly,
Fig. 1b represents a rotated trio scenario in a three-layer site.
In this scenario, cells in the second highest frequency layer are
rotated since the expected area served by A” is actually served
by Γ”, the expected area served by B” is actually served by
A” and the expected area served by Γ” is actually served by
B”.
The existence of swapped sectors affects the network per-
formance in multiple ways. Bad accessibility performance is
one of the issues found in networks where swapped sectors
exist. This is due to conflicts in Physical Random Access
Channel (PRACH) root sequences, which are planned and also
optimized according to the network geometry. Another issue
produced by swapped sectors is poor mobility performance.
As with PRACH root sequences, Physical Cell IDs (PCI) are
planned and optimized according to the network geometry.
Therefore, swapped sectors might derive to PCI confusions
during handover procedures. Moreover, in absence of Auto-
matic Neighbor Relation (ANR), there could be a lack of
defined neighbor relationships which, would lead to call drops.
Furthermore, capacity issues may arise in presence of swapped
sectors. Since different co-sited cells could be dimensioned to
provide service to a diverse number of users, they can suffer
from overcongestion and low utilization issues in case their
service areas differ from what was planned. Therefore, because
of these, detecting swapped sectors helps operators to improve

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LCOMM.2018.2867846, IEEE
Communications Letters
the network performance.
Originally, swapped sectors were detected as part of feeder
inspection during site visits planned by operators. However,
since these visits are not time nor cost efficient, automatic
methods are highly demanded. These methods can be classified
as algorithms based on interference measurements [2] and
algorithms based on handover statistics [3], [4]. All the state-
of-the-art methods were designed for traditional single-layer
networks, without taking advantage of the particularities of
multi-layer networks. In this context, this paper proposes a
novel methodology to automatically detect swapped sectors in
multi-layer cellular networks improving results of state-of-the-
art methods.
This paper is organized as follows. Section II reviews state-
of-the-art techniques to detect swapped sectors. In Section III,
a method to accurately detect swapped sectors in multi-layer
networks is described. Finally, in Section IV a multi-layer
dynamic simulator as well as real data have been used to
measure the accuracy of the proposed method for detecting
swapped sectors.
II. R ELATED WORK
Traditionally, drive tests [5] have been executed to detect
swapped sectors. For that, User Equipment (UE) connected
to a special device known as Scanner has been used in order
to perform radiofrequency (RF) measurements and find cells’
service areas. Thus, once these areas are determined, detecting
swapped sectors based on the concept depicted in Fig. 1 is
possible.
Nevertheless, drive/walk testing has several disadvantages.
Drive testing requires visiting sites’ surrounding areas to
perform RF measurements, which makes it a long duration
activity. Furthermore, drive testing is a costly procedure in
terms of both operating expenditures (e.g., recording samples,
processing logs, ...) and capital expenditures (e.g., vehicles,
mobile devices, scanners, ...) [6].
In order to reduce costs and expedite the detection of
swapped sectors, new automatic methods have been presented
in the literature. A method based on RF interference meas-
urements obtained by the UEs and reported to the network
through measurement reports is described in [2]. This method
overcomes drive testing drawbacks but, due to the variability
of the RF channel, its accuracy is far from that of drive
testing. Moreover, managing the required information needs
a high processing capacity to process L3 messages. Thus,
other methods based on network mobility statistics were
presented in [3], [4]. Since these methods utilize performance
measurements calculated by the network itself as standardized
in [7], they are very fast compared to processing L3 messages.
All the previous methods are good alternatives to drive
testing. However, they are less accurate in terms of accuracy
as they depend on the geometry of the network. This is, in
order to detect swapped sectors, these methods use network
performance data to find cells pointing towards directions far
from the planned direction of the sector they belong to. For
this, the location of their neighbor cells is used. Therefore,
cells could be found to be pointing towards directions that
have been biased by the location of their neighbor cells.
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2
Specially, due to the high number of connections in multi-
layer networks, which makes these more susceptible to the
existence of swapped sectors, the improvement in the accuracy
of automated methods becomes critical since a high number of
cases could remain undetected. Therefore, in the next section
a new methodology based on inter-layer mobility statistics to
detect swapped sectors is described. This new methodology
does not depend on the geometry of the network so that it
improves the state-of-the-art techniques.
III. P ROPOSED METHOD
This letter describes a general method to detect swapped
sectors valid to be applied to any mobile communications
network (i.e.: GSM, UMTS, LTE or NR).
The proposed method automatically detects cases where the
coverage areas of two or more cells belonging to the same
site have been swapped. For this, unlike other state-of-the-
art methods, the proposed method utilizes intra-site mobility
statistics between different frequency layers of the network.
Specifically, successful handovers where both the source cell
and the target cell belong to the same site but to different
frequency layers are used. Moreover, the proposed method
requires information about the sectors, such as the antenna
azimuth and the antenna beamwidth for every cell. Antenna
azimuth is used to identify which sector the cell belongs to.
Antenna beamwidth is used to discard cells intended to be
connected to isotropic antennas (i.e.: the antenna beamwidth
is 360o ) since these cells are not sectorized.
As described previously, site sectorization is also applicable
to multi-layer networks. In these networks, more than one
cell is assigned to the same site’s sector so they provide
service to the same area. However, due to the properties of
RF propagation, lower frequency layers propagate farther than
higher frequency layers.
In a multi-layer network site, service areas from highest
frequency cell to lowest frequency cell of any sector are
overlapped, so there are areas in which users may be served by
any of the frequency layers (e.g., in Fig. 1a, the area covered
by cell A” is also covered by cell A’). In these overlapped
areas different obstacles like buildings, trees or traffic signals
among others may exist. Due to RF propagation properties,
these obstacles affect in varied manners to the different layers
in the network. Therefore, dynamic users could move from
areas served by a given layer to areas served by a different
layer by performing inter-layer handovers.
According to the previous, a high number of successful
handovers in multi-layer networks are expected to take place
among the different cells belonging to the same site’s sector.
This characteristic can be used to detect swapped sectors.
Consequently, in the context of intra-site mobility, the number
of successful handovers performed from a given source cell
towards a target cell of a different layer is expected to be the
highest when both source and target cells belong to the same
sector. As an example, in Fig. 1b, the number of successful
handovers performed from A”’ towards A’ is expected to be
higher than the number of successful handovers performed
from A”’ towards B’ or Γ’, as well as the number of successful
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LCOMM.2018.2867846, IEEE
Communications Letters
(a) Handovers from lowest layer ’ to highest layer ”
(b) Handovers from highest layer ” to lowest layer ’
Figure 2: Inter-layer successful handovers in a swapped pair
scenario
handovers performed from A”’ towards A” is expected to be
higher than the number of successful handovers performed
from A”’ towards B” or Γ”. Therefore, if this condition is not
met, source cell is identified as a candidate to be swapped.
Moreover, since the existence of swapped sectors is the
result of the interchange of radio feeders, more than one
swapped candidate must be identified in case swapped sectors
exist. Thus, in case of swapped pairs, two cells must be
identified as swapped candidates and in case of rotated trios
three cells must be identified as swapped candidates. This
is referred as reciprocity criterion. Therefore, to fulfill the
reciprocity criterion in the scenario depicted in Fig. 1a, both
cells B’ and Γ’ must be identified as swapped candidates and,
in the scenario depicted in Fig. 1b, cells A”, B” and Γ” must
be identified as swapped candidates.
Fig. 2 shows an example of the number of inter-layer suc-
cessful handovers performed between all cells in the scenario
represented in Fig. 1a. In this figure it is observed that, since
cells B’ and Γ’ are swapped, then the number of successful
handovers from cell B’ towards cell Γ” (178) is higher than
the number of successful handovers from cell B’ towards cell
A” (14) and towards cell B” (23). Furthermore, the reciprocity
criterion is also met since the number of successful handovers
from cell Γ’ towards cell B” (95) is higher than the number
of successful handovers from cell Γ’ towards cell A” (10) and
towards cell Γ” (12).
However, from Fig. 2 it is also observed that in a swapped
sectors scenario not only the actual swapped cells are detected
but also cells in other layers. This is, not only cells B’ and
Γ’ are detected as swapped but also cells B” and Γ” since the
number of successful handovers from cell B” towards cell Γ’
(88) is higher than the number of successful handovers from
cell B” towards cell A’ (12) and cell B’ (25) and the number
of successful handovers from cell Γ” towards cell B’ (97) is
higher than the number of successful handovers from cell Γ”
towards cell A’ (13) and cell Γ’ (17). Therefore, in this case
sectors B and Γ are identified as swapped but it is impossible
to determine in which layer they are swapped.
Similarly, applying the previous method to the scenario
depicted in Fig. 1b, all three layers are identified to have
rotated trios. This is, cells A’, B’, Γ’ and A”’, B”’, Γ”’ are
detected as rotated according to their number of successful
handovers towards cells A”, B”, Γ”. With respect to cells A”,
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Algorithm 1: Swapped sectors detection
Input : Intra-site inter-layer successful handovers
Antennas’ beamwidth and azimuth
Output: Detected swapped sectors
1 for each site do
2 for each layer in site do
3 Calculate swapped candidates using inter-layer successful
handovers
4 Apply reciprocity criterion to swapped candidates
5 end
6 if Same sectors detected as swapped in several layers then
Apply highest detection criterion
7 Return swapped sectors ;
8 end
B”, Γ”, these are also detected as rotated according to their
number of successful handovers towards cells A’, B’, Γ’ and
A”’, B”’, Γ”’. Therefore, since cells A”, B”, Γ” are identified
as rotated in relation to two layers and cells A’, B’, Γ’ and
A”’, B”’, Γ”’ are identified as rotated in relation to only one
layer, then cells A”, B”, Γ” are determined as the actual rotated
cells. This is referred as highest detection criterion.
Consequently, a method has been described to detect sites
having swapped sectors in any of its layers. Detecting these
sites is enough for engineers to identify which sites to visit in
order to fix the misconnected feeders. Furthermore, in case the
number of layers having swapped sectors is lower than a half
of the total number of layers in the site, then the proposed
method is also able to detect which are the layers having
swapped sectors.
The proposed method is detailed in Algorithm 1.
IV. R ESULTS
A. Simulated results
The effectiveness of the proposed method (hereby referred
as Multi-layer method) has been evaluated using an Ericsson
internal multi-layer dynamic simulator coded in Python pro-
gramming language. In order to eliminate any possible bias in
the results due to network configuration, 10 random network
configurations have been generated. Every one of these is
composed of 200 sites spread over an area of 42 km2 where the
minimum inter-site distance has been set to 200 meters. All the
sites in these networks are tri-sectorized, where azimuths have
been generated according to a von Mises distribution (setting
κ = 0) being the minimum distance between co-site sectors’
azimuths constrained to 80o . Furthermore, four configurations
of layers have been set up to simulate different number of
layers in all the previous networks. The first configuration
consists of one layer in 850 MHz band and one in 1.8 GHz
band, the second configuration adds an additional layer in 1.8
GHz band and finally, third and fourth configurations add one
and two more layers in 2.6 GHz band, respectively. Therefore,
a total of 40 network configurations have been used in this
experiment. In all network configurations, the effect of the
existence of one random swapped pair or rotated trio among
all the possible sites and layers has been simulated. This is,
the service areas of swapped sectors have been interchanged.
Moreover, for network configurations having four and five
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Communications Letters
4

Table I: SIMULATION PARAMETERS Table II: REAL NETWORK RESULTS

Parameter Configuration Number Method I Method II Multi-layer
Number of networks 10 Network of Layers True False True False True False
Number of layers (Nlayers) 2 to 5 eNBs pos. pos. pos. pos. pos. pos.
Cellular layout 600 x Nlayers cells 1.8 GHz
1 211 1 0 2 3 4 0
200 tri-sectorized eNBs 2.6 GHz
Frequency bands 850 MHz 850 MHz
1.8 GHz (1 to 2 carriers) 2 112 1.8 GHz 2 0 2 4 2 0
2.6 GHz (1 to 2 carriers) 2.6 GHz
User interarrival time µ = 10 ms σ = 2 ms 850 MHz
3 335 2 1 1 3 2 0
User dwell time µ = 60 s σ = 30 s 2.6 GHz
User speed µ = 72 km/h σ = 18 km/h
User direction dwell time µ = 20 s σ = 5 s System (OSS) data has been used to collect mobility statistics
Simulated time 4h
Time resolution 1000 TTI (1 s) during a period of 24 hours. Subsequently, the performance
Swapped cases per site (Ss) 1 to 2 of Method I, Method II and Multi-layer method have been
Swapped cases 1000 x Ss pair cases evaluated. For the sake of a fair comparison between methods,
1000 x Ss trio cases
since not all the evolved NodeBs (eNBs) in these networks
have cells in more than one layer, results have only been
obtained in eNBs where multiple layer configuration exists.
Finally, site visits have been carried out to evaluate the ac-
curacy of the results, being these categorized as true positives
(i.e.: correctly detected cases) and false positives (i.e.: wrongly
detected cases). Table II summarizes these results. In these
three networks, Multi-layer method has found the same true
positives as those found by Method I and Method II together.
Moreover, in Network 1, Multi-layer method has also found
two additional true positives. Regarding false positives, unlike
the other methods, Multi-layer method has not detected any.
Therefore, real data has confirmed the proposed Multi-
Figure 3: Simulation Results
layer method to have a better accuracy in terms of both true
layers, the effect of the existence of two random swapped pairs positives and false positives figures than current state-of-the-
or rotated trios in the same site and different layers among all art methods.
the possible sites and layers has been simulated. Finally, every V. C ONCLUSIONS
simulation case has been repeated 1.000 times. This letter presents a method to automatically detect
The main simulation parameters are summarized in Table I. swapped sectors on multi-layer networks. For this, successful
For the sake of comparison, Multi-layer method proposed intra-site handovers between different network frequency lay-
in this letter as well as Method I and Method II based on ers are utilized to detect inconsistencies in mobility patterns.
handover statistics in [4] have been evaluated after every The proposed method has been compared against state-of-
simulation. For this, Method I and Method II have been the-art methods through a significant number of simulations
adapted to multi-layer networks so that not only intra-layer as well as by means of three experiments on real networks.
handovers are used to find the directions where handovers Two indicators have been defined to evaluate the results of this
are performed, but also inter-layer handovers are considered comparison: true positives and false positives. Finally, both the
for this purpose. True positives rate (i.e.: correctly detected simulations and the experiments on real networks have demon-
swapped cases divided by the total number of swapped cases) strated the proposed method to be the foremost methodology
and false positives rate (i.e.: wrongly detected cases divided to detect swapped sectors in multi-layer networks.
by the number of node-layer pairs in the network) have been
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