Journal of Communication and Computer 11(2014) 448-459

doi: 10.17265/1548-7709/2014.05 005

D DAVID PUBLISHING

Key Technologies for SON in Next Generation Radio

Access Networks

Xin Su, Jie Zeng and Chiyang Xiao

Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

Abstract: The aim of SON (self-organizing network) is to realize the autonomic function of the wireless network by self-configuration,
self-optimization and self-healing, which reduces the human intervention and improves the user experience. Self-configuration is a
process where newly deployed eNodeBs are configured by automatic installation procedures to get the necessary basic configuration
for system operation. Self-optimization is a process that continuously monitors an environment and automatically optimizes various
parameters when the environment changes. Self-healing is a process that detects and localizes failures, then fixes the problems
automatically. This paper gives a comprehensive introduction to the SON functionalities and outlines the framework of
self-configuration, self-optimization and self-healing. Some concrete algorithms are proposed for self-optimization and self-healing,
which include capacity and coverage optimization and cell outage detection and compensation respectively. Simulation results in
various scenarios are provided to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms.

Key words: Self-organizing network, automated configuration, capacity and coverage optimization, cell outage detection,
compensation.

Introduction optimization or ordering and supported by computer

aided tools, which requires a lot of the professionals
Optimizing network performance and maximizing
and operating costs. To operate the network to the
its efficiency automatically has long been the ambition
fullest of its performance potential while minimize
of the network operators as the demand for wireless
manual intervention, the SON (self-organizing
access to internet and internet-based services are
network) paradigm was first defined by the NGMN
expanding rapidly [1, 2]. This demand will become
(next generation mobile networks) Alliance[4, 5],
more and more pressing in next generation
where the aim of the proposed SON was to realize a
communication system for the follow reasons: on the
series of functionalities for automated
one hand, acquisition of new spectrum involves
self-organization of LTE (long term evolution) radio
outstanding capital outlays and is almost impossible
access networks. As a new network management
[3]; on the other hand, the next generation radio access
framework, the support of SON paradigm was first
network may adopt a dense deployment, thus drawing
transformed into concrete functionalities, interfaces
more KPIs (key performance indicators), more
and procedures by the 3GPP (third generation
network setting parameters and more functionality
partnership project) in 3GPP Release 8 during the
needed to be managed. The current deployed networks
standardization of LTE and LTE-Advanced [5].
are mainly managed by centralizing remote OAM
According to Ref. [6], SON realizes its basic goal of
(operations and maintenance) applications with all
reducing OPEX/CAPEX (operational and capital
processes in OAM, e.g., planning, measurement and
expenditure) by decreasing human involvement in the
activities of network operation. Beyond above, the
Corresponding author: ChiyangXiao(1994-), graduate SON aims at a self-organizing behavior of the network
student, research fields: broad band wireless access, network
architecture. E-mail: xiaocy13@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn. to increase network performance and quality by
 Key Technologies for SON in Next Generation Radio Access Networks
reacting on dynamic variation processes in the network.
This technical progress shall be used not only to
increase basic user performance of the new network,
but also to improve operability. The differences
between traditional network and SON network are
shown in Fig. 1.
SON functionalities can be divided into
self-configuration, self-optimization and self-healing.
So far, a lot of researches have been done on these
functionalities. Multi-technology was described in Ref.
[3] to support SON for multi-vendor and
multi-technology (2G, 3G and LTE) wireless
infrastructures. Centralized and distributed PCI
assignment algorithms were proposed in Refs. [7, 8] to
realize automated configuration of PCI. A
traffic-light-related approach was proposed in Ref. [9]
to autonomously optimize the tradeoff performance
indicators in LTE multitier networks. A self-healing
framework was introduced in Refs. [10, 11]. In Refs.
[12-15], some concrete self-healing methods were
studied, mainly using graph theory and Bayesian
network. However, the deployment of the next
generation radio access network shall be very different
eNodeB
Control Center
Network
New eNodeB
Professionals
Damaged eNodeB
Professionals
DT
Professionals
eNodeB Professionals Traditional network
eNodeB
SON Entity
Network
New eNodeB
DT
eNodeB
Non-professional SON
Fig. 1 The traditional network and the SON network.
449
from what it is now. In the near future, small cell and
heterogeneous deployment will become the main
approach to improve network performance, so
corresponding SON technologies or
really― multi-technology‖ SON schematic with
forward compatibility shall be studied as in Refs.[16,
17].
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows:
in Section 2, the framework of each SON functionality
is presented; concrete algorithms are proposed for
some particular SON functionalities in Section 3;
numerical results are presented in Section 5 and
Section 6 concludes this paper.
2. Key Technologies of SON
2.1. Self-Configuration
The self-configuration algorithm should take care of
all soft-configuration aspects of the eNodeB once it is
commissioned and powered up for the first time. The
corresponding functionality includes the base station
self-configuration, automatic physical cell identity
assignment, etc..
Base station self-configuration is a dynamic
plug-and-play configuration of newly deployed
eNodeB. It should detect the transport link and
establish a connection with the core network elements,
download and upgrade the corresponding software
version, set up the initial configuration parameters
including neighbor relations, perform a self-test and
finally set itself to operational mode. To successfully
achieve all functions above, the eNodeB should be able
to communicate with several different entities. In
self-configuration phase, when a new eNodeB is
introduced into the network, a series of parameters
such as antenna tilt, pilot power need to be configured.
As one of the radio parameters, PCI is cell identifier on
the physical layer which ranges from 0 to 503 and is
used to scramble the data to help the mobile separate
information from different transmitters. While in most
cases, cells in a network are more than 504, one PCI
needs to be used more than once. During the
450 Key Technologies for SON in Next Generation Radio Access Networks
assignment of PCI, it must fulfill both collision and
confusion free with respective neighbor cells.
2.2 Self-Optimization
Self-optimization is a process that continuously
monitors the environment and automatically optimizes
various parameters when the environment changes.
The corresponding functionality includes the capacity
and coverage optimization, load balance optimization,
interference control optimization, etc..
CCO (coverage and capacity optimization) is one of
the most important self-optimization tasks for SON,
and its objectives include coverage optimization,
capacity optimization and joint optimization of
coverage and capacity. Antenna down tilt is an
effective adjustment parameter for self-optimizing
functionality. Signal levels from the home cell can be
improved while interference to neighboring cells can
be reduced effectively by adjusting the antenna
downtilt angle. Antenna downtilt can be adjusted
mechanically or electrically [18]. Mechanical
downtilting means adjusting the physical angle of the
antenna in the vertical direction. Thus, it is only
effective in the forward direction and requires
time-consuming site visits [19]. Compared with
mechanical downtilting, electrical downtilting is a
better option, for it can not only change the antenna
radiation pattern in all horizontal directions, but enable
automated optimization of the downtilt angle without
any costly site visits by utilizing RET (remote
electrical downtilt) controllers.
The objective of Mobility Load Balancing is to
intelligently spread user traffic across the system’s
radio resources as necessary in order to provide quality
end-user experience and performance, while
simultaneously optimizing system capacity. The
automating of this minimizes human intervention in the
network management and optimization tasks. The
overall MLB thought of the proposal is as follows. The
base unit of MLB is the cell cluster. The eNodeBs in
the same cell cluster start MLB load detection in turn
of time order. After that, the webmaster selects N most
suitable cells, starts MLB according to the priority
from high to low (the priority is decided by the need of
upper layer). The eNodeBs in different cells can launch
MLB detection at the same time. If there exists a MLB
launch cell in the cell cluster, cells in different cell
clusters cannot launch MLB to each other. If there is no
MLB inside adjacent cell clusters, then there could be
MLB between adjacent cell clusters.
In full frequency reuse network, cells using the same
time and frequency domain resources could have
mutual interference. In LTE system based on OFDM
and SC-FDMA, we can coordinate the interference by
using PRB. By setting priority to the using of PRB,
which could decrease or avoid the interference,
improve SIR and further improve throughput. The
function modules of interference coordination
algorithm include distinguishing cell-center users and
cell-edge users, generating load message, managing of
load message, processing load message. The
interference coordination optimization is divided into
two stages: (1) remain the currently used interference
coordination scheme unchanged. We should optimize
the parameters of the scheme, so as to balance the
performance between cell-edge users and the system;
(2) automatically change the interference coordination
scheme. To meet the need of users and decrease the
system overhead, change the scheme between
static-semistatic, semistatic-dynamic or
dynamic-semistatic, semistatic-static. Stage 1 is
always before Stage 2, which is to change schemes
only when the parameter optimization cannot meet the
need of users, so that the system can be stable without
frequent scheme changing. The changing method is
shown in Figs. 2 and 3.
To avoid the ping-pong effect caused by continuous
changing of schemes, the number of continuous
changing can be limited when the scheme degenerates.
For instance, when the number of static-semistatic
continuous changing exceeds the given maximum limit,
it cannot perform semi-static changing but only stop
 Key Technologies for SON in Next Generation Radio Access Networks 451

the current interference coordination optimization.
2.3 Self-Healing
Self-healing is a process that automatically detects
and localizes failures, then fixes the problems.
Self-healing function ensures that the network KPIs are
not affected as much as possible in the failure of some
of the functional entities, maintains the user experience
and saves operation and maintenance cost. Cell outage
management is an important self-healing functionality,
which is divided into COD (cell outage detection) and
COC (cell outage compensation).
Cell outage is the total loss of radio services in the
coverage area of a cell [6]. Outages in cellular
networks may occur with different degrees of
significance and may be due to different causes [10].
The failure of a site, a sector or a physical
channel/signal can be caused by, for example,
hardware or software failures (radio board failure,
channel processing implementation error, etc.) and
external problems such as lack of power supply or
network connectivity issues or even erroneous
configuration. While some of these cell outage cases
can be detected by the O&M system through
performance counters or alarms, others may remain
undetected for hours or even days, and finally be
detected through long term analyses and investigations
triggered by subscriber complaints.
The continuous collection of measurements and
analysis of radio parameters, counters, KPIs, statistics,
alarms and timers are an indispensable precondition for
the detection and compensation of a cell outage. These
measurements may be obtained from various sources
[11], the eNodeB which is affected by the cell outage,
the UEs and O&M system and access gateways. Fed
with these measurements, the cell outage detection
function then determines whether, where and what type
of outage has occurred and triggers both the cell outage
compensation function as well as the operator’s
maintenance department for possible manual repair.
COC is an integral part of self-healing functionality
in the SON concept in E-UTRAN (evolved universal
terrestrial radio access network). Together with COD,
COC forms the concept of COM (cell outage
managemsent). In the framework of COM, a variety of
measurements, e.g., alarms, counters or key
performance indicators (KPIs), are gathered by
the UEs, the enhanced eNodeBs and/or the O&M center
and fed as input to the COD algorithms as described
above. Triggered by the results of the COD function,
the COC function derives compensation measures in
order to automatically mitigate the incurred coverage

CELL1
CELL2

Load Load Load

message message message
processing generation management
User location
information
Measurement
Power PRB User Center&edge signaling CELL3
control Scheduling Resource user divisoin configuration
parameter strategy information
Signal
RSRP
User location information configuration
report
parameter

Power
Scheduling RAC
control
CELLN

Fig. 1 Interference control schematic.

452 Key Technologies for SON in Next Generation Radio Access Networks
Static interference
coordination scheme
parameter optimization
Semi-static interference
coordination scheme
parameter optimization
End this interference
coordination scheme
optimization. Wait for the
next optimization.
Dynamic interference
coordination scheme
parameter optimization
Trigger capacity and
coverage optimization
Fig. 2 Automatic changing of interference coordination
scheme.
degradations by adapting one or more control
parameters (e.g., antenna tilt and/or power settings) in
the cells surrounding the site that has failed. Such
compensation is governed by the operator-formulated
policy and is characterized by an iterative process of
radio parameter adjustments and evaluation of the
performance impact until convergence is reached.
Important feedback is provided by the so-called X-map
estimation function, which processes measurements
including location information in order to generate, for
example, coverage or performance maps. Obviously,
the key elements of the COC mechanism are the
control parameters, the measurement functionality and
the compensation algorithm. In principle, all radio
parameters that somehow affect coverage and the
spatial aspects of capacity and service quality are
potentially relevant control parameters from a COC
perspective. The promising control parameters include
the reference power PRS, antenna tilt, scheduling
parameters and the uplink target received power level
P0. It has been confirmed that the antenna tilt and P0 are
most effective in restoring coverage, while P0 is most
effective in restoring user throughput performance
[11].
3. Algorithms for CCO, COD and COC
3.1 A Centralized Simulated Annealing Approach for
CCO
To balance coverage and capacity optimization
objectives, the CPM (combined performance
measurement) is defined as the weighted sum of the
average and the edge spectral efficiency by a fixed
factor  (0    1) , as described in Eq. (1):
CPM  (1   )SE avrg   SE dege (1)
where, SE avrg and SE edge are the average and the edge
of spectral efficiency (the lower 5-percentile of the
spectral efficiency distribution), respectively.
CPM is a function of downtilt configuration x (see
Eq. (1)). To solve the optimization problem of
maximizing CPM, weadopt the simulated annealing
algorithm min a centralized fashion [20]. The
―centralized fashion‖ means that parameter
configurations of all base stations are taken into
account together by the Operations, Administrations
and Maintenance systems, where the optimization
algorithm is executed.
In the simulated annealing algorithm, as shown in
Table 1, a sequence of tries—different configurations
x—to the optimization problem is generated according
to a certain policy and the optimal configuration
becomes the output. A new configuration is generated
by modifying part of the last accepted one and it will be
accepted, if it has a greater objective function value,
otherwise, it will be accepted with some probability p
calculated in Eq. (2), which decreases over iterations
accompanying the decline of temperature parameter T.
The iterative algorithm simulating the physical process
of annealing is able to avoid getting stuck in a local but
not a global optimum and approximate the optimal
objective function value F* step by step:
 Key Technologies for SON in Next Generation Radio Access Networks 453

Table 1 Simulated Annealing algorithm. the cellular system will be optimized by using the
SA (K, T0, η) online centralized simulated annealing approach.
//K: the total number of iterations
//T0: the initial temperature
In the simulated annealing procedure, there is a
// η: the cooling rate policy about how to generate a new configuration.
initialize the temperature: T = T0
Considering the nature of the physical process of
initialize a configuration x: xi =x0, i =1, …, n
annealing, we should generate a new configuration
perform x
calculate F with a move from the last accepted one, that is to
x* = x, F* = F increase or decrease the downtilt angle of a cell slightly.
loop for K cycles In this sense, the simplest scheme is to select one cell
generate a new configuration x’ via a policy
randomly and adjust its downtilt angle with a random
perform x′
increment or decrement within a range.
calculate F′
If F’>F then However, in order to avoid repetitive moves from
x = x′, F = F′ the last accepted configuration, we propose an
reset r (only valid for the proposed policy) improved policy by recording the adjustment of the
if F > F* then
rejected configurations and subdividing the adjustment
x* = x, F* = F
step. It maintains the all cells’ down tilting records r
end if
Else for the rejected adjustment and they are reset to ―Z‖
Calculatep with Eqs. (2) and (3) (Zero, i.e., means neither increment nor decrement has
generate a random number θ between 0 and 1 been tried) until the new configuration x′ is accepted. ri
if θ < p then
= ―P‖(positive) means an increment for i from the last
x = x′, F = F′
accepted configuration x that has been tried, while ri=
reset r (only valid for the proposed policy)
end ―N‖ (negative) means a decrement for i that has been
end if tried. When both the increment and decrement have
update the temperature: T =ηT been tried, we let ri = ―B‖ (both). Every time for
end loop
generating a new configuration, one of the cells with
Output x*
the record ―Z‖ will be chosen randomly, but if there are

p  exp( ) (2) no such cells, one of the cells with the record ―N‖ or ―P‖
T
where, T is the temperature parameter, decreasing by a will be chosen randomly and its downtilt will be
scale factor  (0    1) over iterations,  is the increased by δ if its record is ―N‖, or -δ if ―P‖. And the
relative difference between the new value of the record is updated simultaneously. When all the records
objective function F′ and the current one F, as shown are set as ―B‖, which means the last accepted
in Eq. (3): configuration is near optimal based on the current
| F  F '| adjustment step, the step size is divided by half.
 (3)
|F|
3.2 A Hybrid Cell Outage Detection Approach Based
Here we let configuration x to be the current downtilt
on Neighbor Cell RSRP Lists
angles of all cells, and take CPM(x) as the objective
function F. After generating a new configuration x, the A NCRL (neighbor cell RSRP list) is created in each
OAM distributes the instructions for down tilting to all cell based on the measurements reported by the UEs
its governing base stations. Then it collects RSRQ attached to the cell. Each measurement is composed of
reports from them and estimates CPM. Thus, the three strongest RSRPs among the neighbor cells. A
overall joint performance of coverage and capacity in RSRP strength grade is evaluated for each reported
454 Key Technologies for SON in Next Generation Radio Access Networks
neighbor cell as showed in Table 2.
All of the RSRP strength grades associated with the
same neighbor cell are summed up and forms the
overall RSRP strength of a certain neighbor cell to the
current cell. The overall RSRP strength of all the
neighbor cells are then put into a vector and makes up
the NCRL.
After each cell has gotten its NCRL, a classification
is conducted in a distributed way in each cell to put
the NCRLs into two categories, indicating whether
neighbor cell outages occurred or not. The
classification can be either supervised or unsupervised.
In supervised way, SVM (support vector machine) is
adopted. In unsupervised way, the NCRLs with one or
several zero components are put into the category that
neighbor cell outage do occur. Those cells whose
NCRLs indicate neighbor cell outages according to
the classification results send reports which contain
the PCI of the cells corresponding to the zero
components to OAM. A centralized detection stage is
then triggered during which a vote for outage cells is
launched in OAM. Each cell gives a vote to its
neighbor cell whose overall RSRP strength is zero in
current cell. As a way of implementation, the PCIs
reported are counted by OAM respectively. A cell is
regarded in outage if its counter exceeds a certain vote
threshold.
3.3 A Centralized Greedy Selecting Approach for
COC
Once an outage has been detected by the COD
mechanism and COC is triggered, it generally means
that the problem cannot be solved by restarting the
failed eNodeBs or reconfiguring the parameters.
Instead, mitigation in the degradation of the
performance can be achieved by altering the radio
parameters of the surrounding cells. The antenna tilt
and the uplink target received power level have been
proved to be the most effective parameters for
compensation. However, adjustment of the radio
parameters of the surrounding cells means that some
Table 2 RSRP strength grade evaluation.
RSRP (dBm) RSRP strength grade
≥ -60 5
-70 ~ -60 4
-80 ~ -70 3
-90 ~ -80 2
-100 ~ -90 1
≤ -100 0
of the UEs served by those cells may be affected
inevitably. This should be taken into account and an
appropriate balance between the capacity/coverage
offered to the outage area and the unavoidable
performance degradation experienced in the
surrounding cells should be achieved in the COC
algorithm.
For the sake of illustration, antenna tilt is selected
as the parameter to be tuned, using the SE (spectrum
effectiveness) in the serving cell and surrounding cells
to evaluate the performance of compensation. The
CPF (compensation performance function) is defined
as follows:
CPF      SE edge (outage-cell)
(1   )    SE (comp-cell) (4)
avrg
  (1   )  SE edge (comp-cell)
where, both  and  are compromising coefficients
to balance the coverage of the outage area and the
performance degradation experienced in the
surrounding cells. The concrete compensation steps are
as follows:
(1). Initialization
Appropriate cells for compensation are selected
from the surrounding cells according to their load,
position and parameter configuration. The number of
the selected cells is denoted as N and the initial value
of the antenna tilts are denoted as
θ(0)  [1 (0),2 (0),, N (0)] . The initial value of
CPF is also calculated utilizing the SINR information
reported by the UEs. An adjustment (3N 1)  N
matrix A is defined, the elements of which are
selected from the set (-1, 0, 1), where -1 represents a
certain decrease of the corresponding antenna tilt, 0
means unchanged and 1 means a certain increase. The
 Key Technologies for SON in Next Generation Radio Access Networks
size of the antenna tilt changes at one time is the
adjustment step, which is denoted as  (0) . A step
tuning factor K is also defined for multistage and
nuanced adjustment.
(2). Adjustment for one time
A new set of antenna tilt is calculated according to
the current antenna tilt and adjustment matrix.
 (k , i)   (k ,0)   (k )  a i (5)
where, k denotes the turns of adjustment and i
denotes the times of adjustment in the k-th turn, a i
denotes the i th row of A . Subsequently, the increment
of CPF is calculated through the feedback from the
UEs.
CPF(k , i )  CPF(k , i )  CPF(k , 0) (6)
(3). Adjustment for one turn
One turn of adjustment comprises 3N  1 times of
adjustments, the time that has the highest increment of
CPF is picked up and selected as optimal adjustment
for the turn. If the CPF increment of the optimal
solution is above 0, the antenna tilt shall be updated
and the corresponding CPF shall be calculated as the
initial state of the next turn of tuning, else, the
adjustment step will be updated in a certain way and
another turn of tuning shall be launched without
changing the initial state.
(4). End of adjustment
The whole compensation comes to an end if no
increment of CPF is achieved after one turn of
adjustment and the adjustment step is less than a given
threshold ε.
4. Numerical Validation
4.1 Simulation Scenario and Parameters
The simulation results presented in this section have
been obtained using a dynamic LTE-based
system-level simulator developed in the light of Refs.
[21, 22] with Matlab tool. The whole network consists
of 19 sites, which are sectored into 57 sectors. The
inter-site distance is 500 m. Three kinds of user density
are provided, corresponding to high load, medium load
and low load from the perspective of the network
455
respectively. Users are distributed randomly and
uniformly in the network, with a speed of 3 km/h. The
configurations of the simulated LTE network are as
follows. A common bandwidth of 10 MHz with a 43
dBm maximum output power, BSs are equipped with a
single antenna modeled by realistic 3D patterns. A full
buffer traffic model and a round-robin scheduling
algorithm are also adapted.
4.2 Simulation and Analysis of CCO
The parameters concerning the approach are as
3
follow: K = 1000, T0  3 10 ,   0.998 ,   1 .
In order to provide more reliable and accurate results
for verifying the approach, we have run 100 mutually
independent experiments with uncorrelated
realizations of user distribution, shadowing and etc..
Thus, all the results listed below are averaged over
these experiments.
Fig. 4 shows the convergence curves for the random
policy and the proposed policy with γ = 0.5. From Fig.
4a, we can see a remarkable gain of about 9% and 12%
with the two policies. Besides, Figs. 4b and Fig. 3c
depict convergence performance for capacity and
coverage respectively, indicating 5% capacity
improvement and 26% coverage improvement for the
random policy, while 7% capacity improvement and 28%
coverage improvement for the proposed policy. The
results demonstrate that the proposed policy is able to
obtain a faster convergence and a better optimal value
than the random one dramatically, as well as a higher
improvement both in capacity and coverage.
The actual time for reaching the optimal is
determined by the time demanded for the base station
to perform the adjustment and the time for the user
equipment to feedback measurement. Considering the
total delay is at the level of 100 ms, we can suppose
the iteration interval is about 100 ms, and then the
total time for 1,000 iterations is about 100 seconds.
Since the traffic distribution may not have great
changes during this period, we can conclude the
proposed approach is able to achieve joint optimization
456 Key Technologies for SON in Next Generation Radio Access Networks

1.25 1.8
Proposed Policy
Random Policy 1.78 =0
 = 0.2
1.2
 = 0.4

SEavrg (bps/Hz)
1.76
 = 0.6
CPM

1.15
1.74

 = 0.8
1.72
1.1

1.7
 = 1.0
1.05
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1.68
Iterations 0.4 0.45 0.5 0.55 0.6 0.65
(a) SEedge (bps/Hz)
1.8 (a)
9

1.75 8 =0
Capacity Improvement(%)  = 0.2
SEavrg (bps/Hz)

7
 = 0.4
1.7
6
 = 0.6
5
1.65  = 0.8
Proposed Policy 4
Random Policy
1.6 3
0 200 400 600 800 1000  = 1.0
Iterations
2
(b) -10 0 10 20 30 40
0.65 Coverage Improvement(%)
(b)
Fig. 4 Tradeoff relationship between coverage and
0.6 capacity: (a) the absolute numerical value; (b) the
SEedge (bps/Hz)

improvement percentage.

0.55 from 0 to 1 with the step of 0.2 are depicted in Fig. 4.

From the curve, we can observe that, as expected, the
0.5 larger optimal coverage we want, the smaller optimal
Proposed Policy capacity we obtain, but if emphasizing coverage
Random Policy
0.45 excessively (γ = 0.8-1.0), the capacity would suffer a
0 200 400 600 800 1000
Iterations
sharp reduction while there is little coverage
(c) improvement. Therefore, if we need to focus on
Fig. 3 Convergence performance for the random policy
coverage, it is recommended that γ is set as 0.6-0.8; if
and the proposed policy:(a) CPM; (b) capacity;(c) coverage.
on capacity, it is better to set γ as 0.2-0.4, for there is
of coverage and capacity through down tilting below 1% less capacity improvement than the
practically. maximum (the point γ = 0) but nearly 13%-24%
Furthermore, in order to study the tradeoff coverage improvement.
relationship between coverage and capacity, we From the results, we can draw a conclusion that our
conduct simulations with different values of the proposed approach has some good characters of
weighting factor γ in Eq. (3). The results with γ varying convergence speed and stability in the optimization
 Key Technologies for SON in Next Generation Radio Access Networks 457

task. Besides, we have studied the tradeoff relationship
between coverage and capacity and have provided
some useful instructions for balancing the two.
4.3 Simulation and Analysis of COD
Recall rate and detection precision are evaluated for
the detection algorithm. The recall rate and detection
proposed algorithm can make effective compensation
for the users in the outage cell after COD mechanism
detects an outage. In the preliminary stage of
compensation, the adjustment step is relatively large,
low load
1

recall rate or precision

precision mentioned above are defined as follows:
TN 0.8
Recall  (7)
ON 0.6
TN
Precosion  (8) 0.4
DN unsupervised recall
unsupervised precision
where, TN is the true detection number, i.e., the 0.2 supervised recall
number of cells that are in outage and have been supervised precision
successfully detected, ON is the virtual number of 0
1 2 3 4 5 6
outage cells during simulation, DN is the number of vote threshold
(a)
cells that have been regarded as in outage by the medium load
approach proposed above. Recall rate and detection
precision for three different kinds of cell load and two 1
recall rate or precision

different classification methods are depicted in Fig. 6.

0.8
It can be seen that detection precision increases with
vote threshold in both supervised and unsupervised 0.6
manner. The recall rate decreases with vote threshold 0.4 unsupervised recall
in supervised manner while remaining unchanged in unsupervised precision
0.2 supervised recall
unsupervised manner. To get a balance between recall
supervised precision
rate and detection precision, a proper vote threshold 0
1 2 3 4 5 6
should be selected. A detection gain can be acquired vote threshold
through increase of UEs number in each cell, as can be (b)
high load
seen from the comparison between the three figures
above. When the vote threshold is 3 for supervised
1
recall rate or precision

manner and 4, 5 or 6 for unsupervised manner, both the

detection precision and recall rate can been over 96%, 0.8
thus, a cell outage can be easily detected and located by 0.6
the proposed approach with a sufficient large
unsupervised recall
probability. 0.4
unsupervised precision
0.2 supervised recall
4.4 Simulation and Analysis of COC supervised precision
0
The parameters concerning the approach are as 3 1 2 4 5 6
1 vote threshold
follow:   0.9 ,   0.9,  (0)  2 , K  ,   0.1 . (c)
2 Fig. 6 Recall rate and detection precision in different cell
Fig. 5a shows the normalized CPF diagram during loads using two different classification methods: (a) low
the compensation process. It indicates that the load; (b) medium load; (c) high load.
458 Key Technologies for SON in Next Generation Radio Access Networks

1 number of compensation cells is not too big.

0.9 Fig. 5b shows the CDF diagram of the throughput
of the users before outage, after outage before
0.8
compensation and after compensation. It can be easily
Normalized CPF

0.7 seen from the compare between the three curves that
0.6 the edge throughput drops from 0.08 to 0, which
indicates a droop rate of 100%. The compensation
0.5
gives it a 70% increase, i.e., the edge throughput
0.4 increases from 0 to 0.07 after compensation is made.
0.3 It shall also be pointed out that a great mitigation of
degradation of the average throughput is found in the
0.2
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 diagram, which proves the effectiveness of the
Steps
algorithm.
(a)
1 In the proposed algorithm, only antenna tilt is
0.9 considered and adjusted. In fact, there are many other
0.8 control parameters that are very important to COC. It
0.7 is reasonable to believe that better performance of
0.6 compensation can be achieved if more parameters are
CDF

0.5 taken into account. Moreover, combining

0.4
0.3
0.2 before outage
after outage before compensation
0.1
after compensation
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6
Throughput
(b)
Fig. 5 CPF diagram: (a) normalized; (b) UE throughput
in different stages.
causing the CPF acutely fluctuating. When it comes to
the end of the compensation, the CPF finally
converges to a relatively optimal state. Since the
algorithm makes the best selection every turn, it easily
gets a suboptimum solution when convergence is
reached. However, this problem can be avoided by
selecting adjustment step appropriately. Since 3N-1
sets of parameters have to be traversed in each turn,
the time complexity of this algorithm can become
rather high when the number of cells that participate
in the compensation is sufficiently large. As a
consequence, this centralized greedy selecting
approach only goes for the situations where the
self-optimization can be implemented in the area that
containing the outage cell, compensating cells and
their surrounding cells to achieve a better network
performance.
0.8 1 5. Conclusions and Future Work
In this paper, we introduced the framework of SON
and some key technologies for self-configuration,
self-optimization and self-healing. In particular, a
centralized simulated annealing approach for CCO, a
hybrid NCRL-based approach for COD and a
centralized greedy selecting approach for COC were
adopted to get advantages in coverage and capacity
united optimization. Simulation results show that the
above approaches can automatically optimize or heal
the network in a way. However, the next generation
radio access network is likely to have a dense
deployment; centralized algorithms have some
inherent disadvantages such as high signaling cost and
low time efficiency. As a supplement, distributed SON
approaches remains to be considered and developed in
the future.
 Key Technologies for SON in Next Generation Radio Access Networks
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