W H I T E PA P E R
Alan Gatherer
CTO and TI Fellow, High-Performance and
Multicore Processing business
Peter Dent, B.Sc. (Eng.)
Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff,
Communications Infrastructure
Sandeep Bhadra, PhD
Systems engineer, DSP Systems
Research & Development
Ramanuja Vedantham, PhD
Systems engineer, DSP Systems
Research & Development
Introduction
Since its beginning, the telecommunications
industry has been marked by periodic waves of
productivity enhancements. For example, long
gone is the army of operators at switchboards
manually cross-connecting calls. Replaced by
automated switching processes, these soldiers
of telecommunications’ early days have moved
on to more meaningful work experiences.
As the industry transitions from 2G/3G to
4G networks and equipment based on Long
Term Evolution (LTE) technologies, the ability to
automate management processes has emerged
as a key technology requirement. TR 36.902 of
the Third Generation Partnership Program (3GPP)
is one of several specifications and technical
documents under development that address
the issue of self-organizing or self-optimizing
networks (SONs). SONs configure and optimize
networks automatically to minimize operational
effort and improve network performance.
Self-optimizing networks
(SON): doing more with less
The SON movement offers productivity enhancements derived from automations in wireless
network infrastructures. Improving network productivity as a whole will reap significant benefits
in terms of lower operational expenses (OPEX) for network operators. SONs will create a more
organic wireless infrastructure fabric capable of quickly growing and expanding its services to
meet the fast-changing needs of the moment, as well as the longer term growth requirements
of the wireless industry.
Simplifying complexities
The need for SONs emerged from the high degree of complexity and rapidly increasing number
of base stations in 2G and 3G wireless infrastructures. In the absence of SONs, these challenges
are being dealt with manually.
For example, network vendors and operators currently perform routine preoperation and
in-operation tests to satisfy certain grade-of-service/quality-of-service (GoS/QoS) metrics for
subscribers within advertised call areas. Some of these operations require labor-intense
monitoring of RF signals by radio-equipment vans circulating in provider call areas; other
operations may be remotely monitored and adjusted manually by technicians working with the
provider’s operations administration and maintenance (OA&M) software in a control center.
In addition, the move away from a voice-only wireless network to a hybrid voice/data
network complicated network operations by increasing transmission options, including rate
of transmission, time of transmission, multiantenna options, retransmissions and others. This
in turn increased manually controlled interdependence among base stations as a way to
mitigate traffic congestion.
However, with the innovation of a flatter all-IP network and the deployment of greater
bandwidth in the core backhaul network, it is now possible to automate many of the
configuration, optimization and healing functions of wireless networks. SONs offer a vision in
which base stations automatically interact with each other and with the core network to perform
self-organizing functions.
Now that the industry is migrating toward 4G LTE, it faces a transitional period where
networks comprise 2G, 3G and 4G technologies, exacerbating the complexities of network op-
erations even further. In such a heterogeneous environment, the dynamic operating parameters
of base stations will change even more rapidly. Technology suppliers must provide solutions that
will allow wireless networks to, first and foremost, serve consumers in the most efficient manner
possible, and second, to fully capitalize on the vastly greater capabilities of 4G technology.
2 Texas Instruments

The need to reduce operational efforts and complexity are key drivers for the 4G LTE. Operators and equipment
vendors are increasingly interested in reducing the manual effort required to maintain networks efficiently and
to ensure system operability in multitechnology, multioperator, heterogeneous networks. Without the automation
inherent in SONs, 4G technology will not live up to its full potential.
The wireless industry’s approach to SONs has been a pervasive one. SONs will come into play from the first
moment a base station is powered up through its ongoing, daily operations. In addition to the staggering number
of the network parameters that an individual base station must deal with, new 4G technologies must be able
to mesh with the older 2G/3G technologies that could be functioning in the same infrastructure. For example,
handoffs from one cell to the next, cell camping, load balancing and other network operations must be handled
seamlessly among 2G, 3G and 4G technologies.
The transition to 4G only accentuates the industry’s need for an organic infrastructure that can quickly grow
and expand with as little human intervention as possible. For example, network architectures are also evolving
with new form-factor base stations such as femtocells. These small form-factor base stations are targeted at
residences and small businesses. To avoid exploding operational costs, a new level of plug-and-play provisioning
and self-configuration based on SON technology will be required to deploy femtocells to millions of homes and
businesses.
The three fundamental strata that would make up a SON are self-configuration, self-optimization and
self-healing. Cutting across these strata are a number of important operational goals, such as energy reduction,
RF interference reduction, coverage and capacity optimization, intercell interference coordination (ICIC), mobility
robustness, load balancing, configuration automation, neighboring cell relationships, channel utilization
optimization, and others.

Figure 1: The three fundamental

strata of SONs are self-configuration,
eNB power on
self-optimization and self-healing. (or cable connected)
a-1: Configuration of IP address
and detection of OAM

a-2: Authentication of eNB/NW

(A) Basic setup
a-3: Association to a GW

Downloading of eNB
Self-configuration a-4: software (and operational
parameters)
(pre-operational state)

b-1: Neighbor list configuration

(B) Initial radio
configuration
Coverage-/capacity-related
b-2: parameter configuration
Self-optimization
(operational state)
c-1: Neighbor list optimization

(C) Optimization/ c-2: Coverage and capacity

adaptation control

c-3: Failure
healing
detection and

Self-optimizing networks (SON): doing more with less June 2009

 Texas Instruments 3

Self-configuration: begin
at the beginning
From the moment a SON base station is first powered up, it will have the ability to automatically configure itself,
installing and adjusting its initial parameters before joining the network. This would apply to macrocell base sta-
tions, which are installed in soaring towers with extensive RF ranges; picocells, which have more limited reach;
and even the new femtocell base stations for homes and small businesses. As a part of the self-configuration
process, the base station would have the ability to configure its physical cell identity, including its IP address,
and to authenticate its software and configuration data.
Once these steps are completed, the base station would initialize its radio configuration. This involves setting
up the station’s relationships with base stations in neighboring cells, configuring the station’s neighbor list.
An automated configuration process takes on even greater importance as more base stations are deployed
to improve network coverage and capacity. Moreover, 4G networks will not be homogenous with regards to the
types of base stations that make up the network. To date, the mainstay of the wireless infrastructure has always
been the large macrocell, but moving forward, more and more of the smaller femtocells and picocells will dot
the wireless landscape.
Femtocells that automatically configure themselves will be imperative for cost-conscious operators. Features
like the ability to automatically configure the cell’s physical ID and construct its neighbor relation table will en-
able plug-and-play capabilities in a SON; this will support the rapid deployment of femtocells and picocells.

Self-optimization: Following its initial self-configuration, a SON base station will begin optimizing its operating procedures,
hands-free tuning including the process whereby it dynamically prunes and selects the base stations on its neighbors list.
The optimization phase strives for maximum efficiencies based on a number of criteria, including energy
consumption, interference conditions, range requirements, random access channel (RACH) utilization,
mobility optimizations and others.
Measurements from the base station itself, as well as cellular handsets within its range, form the basis
for an auto-tuning process that brings the base station to its optimum operating state for any particular
moment in time. Of course, conditions can change dramatically from one moment to the next. A SON base
station must be able to automatically sense spatial and temporal changes in the network and adapt its
operations accordingly.

Self-healing Once operational and initially optimized, a SON base station is sure to encounter conditions that will require
automatic self-healing mechanisms. In the case of network failures, the station must be able to detect a wide va-
riety of failure conditions and automatically launch actions that would be appropriate to each condition. The intent
of these alternative self-healing processes and procedures is to guarantee a certain GoS and QoS to subscribers.
A base station’s self-healing processes are often intertwined with self-optimizing procedures. For example, a
station might automatically increase its power output and extend its range in order to offload a neighboring cell
that is overloaded with traffic and failing to connect an unacceptably high number of calls. This automatic expan-
sion of a cell’s borders is sometimes referred to as “breathing” because the base station will pushed outside its
borders to alleviate the congested conditions experienced by a neighboring cell. At the same time, the overloaded
base station will contract its borders to better serve the highly concentrated number of users within its range.

Self-optimizing networks (SON): doing more with less June 2009

4 Texas Instruments

With SON technology, this automatic breathing process can be particularly beneficial to subscribers dur-
ing peak traffic conditions throughout the course of a typical day. For example, many people stuck in rush
hour traffic along a freeway corridor might all want to call home at the same time, increasing the automatic
deployment of resources along this corridor. During off-peak hours when few subscribers are driving on this
highway, some of cells might be turned off. Without SON technology, many wireless operators have had to
deploy technicians to manually manipulate base station energy output, channel utilization and other operating
parameters in their networks.

Optimization SONs can automatically optimize base station performance in the entire network to better serve subscribers.
criteria There are a number of criteria that reflect base station performance. A truly optimized base station is when
all of these criteria operate at the most efficient level possible given sometime conflicting requirements of
various performance criteria. Optimization often involves trade-offs among these criteria.

Operating criteria critical to a SON include:

Energy savings. The cost of electricity to power base stations represents a larger portion of service
providers’ operating expenses every year. For example, at the Base Station Conference in 2006,
European service provider Orange acknowledged that base station power consumption had grown to
approximately 75 percent of its network’s total power consumption. With non-SON 3G equipment, the
only way operators could curb these expenses was to manually turn cells on or off based on the load
conditions present in the network.

In addition to the low-power components that will be implemented in 4G equipment, SONs will
automatically power down cells or simply reduce the transmit power output of certain base stations. For
example, during the middle of the night when there is little traffic on the network, certain cells can reduce
their power output or turn off completely. To maintain coverage, a SON operations and management system
might compensate for turning off a cell by slightly increasing the power output of a neighboring cell. Energy
reduction will be critical with the deployment of base stations in new form factors, such as residential
femtocell and mid-size picocell base stations.
Figure 2: SON enables the ability
to switch ON a home eNB (home 2. Entering home
eNB’s neighbor cell MME
base station) to increase energy
3. Activate
savings for residential and enterprise Cell 2
7. Deactivate
femtocell users based on tracking the 4. Move
mobility of the mobile user from “cell eNB Home
1” to “cell 2” to the home. Similarly, a Cell 1 eNB 1 Cell 3
SON would switch the home eNB OFF 1. Move 6. Out of home
eNB neighbor
when the mobile user steps out of cells
eNB Cell 4 5. Move
their home or office to cell 4. eNB

eNB

Self-optimizing networks (SON): doing more with less June 2009


SON: a present
and future imperative
Self-optimizing networks (SON): doing more with less
Texas Instruments 5
Interference. SONs address two aspects of signal interference among cells: Interference reduction
(IR) refers to slower low-frequency signals such as power control signals, while intercell interference
coordination (ICIC) concerns interference that arises at a finer time scale than IR interference. SONs’
IR and ICIC techniques choose the appropriate time and frequency resources to mitigate both types
of interference. For example, frequency management, beam forming, transmit power reductions and
other techniques could be deployed automatically.
Interference will become increasingly critical because 4G networks will inevitably employ a greater number
of access points to increase capacity, coverage and bandwidth, and many of these new base stations will be
nested within larger cells. For example, SONs might dynamically adjust the transmit output power of a femto-
cell in a home to limit any potential interference it might cause for the larger macrocell where it is located.
Random access channel (RACH) success. Automatically setting up RACH configuration parameters
such as the number of preambles on a packet and ramp-up power can optimize a SON base station’s
RACH performance, reducing synchronization times, call setup times and handover delays while
improving other aspects of RACH performance.
Coverage and capacity maximization. A wireless network’s coverage and capacity are optimized
by monitoring channel quality to identify base station coverage holes and to eliminate unnecessary
overlapping coverage areas. SON base stations can dynamically manipulate parameters such as
antenna tilt and reference power offsets to compensate for lapses in coverage and to ensure adequate
capacity where and when it is needed.
Mobility optimizations. The mobility features of a SON can be optimized in terms of the robustness
of mobile services, like handoffs from one cell to the next and by balancing load traffic among
contiguous cells. Robustness is measured by the number of handoffs that can be processed, the
elapsed time needed for handoffs, radio link failures, access failures and others. By observing these
factors, SON base stations can dynamically adapt certain parameters to improve performance.
Balancing call loads in cells can have salutary effects on cell call capacity. SON base stations exchange
information on their respective call loads and distribute call traffic accordingly. As a result, the handoff
success rate improves while QoS increases.
A number of factors have come together at this time to thrust SONs to the forefront and accentuate just
how critically imperative SON technology is to the future of the wireless industry and 4G. Increasing levels of
protocol complexities, escalating and unharnessed OPEX costs, the proliferation of the number and types of
base stations, the heterogeneous nature of the wireless infrastructure for the foreseeable future – these and
other factors have convinced Texas Instruments (TI) that SONs in all of their various aspects are not just good
for the industry but decidedly necessary.
June 2009
 Those working on applicable LTE standard specifications are establishing a basis for a required level of
interoperability. Certainly, LTE Advanced will make additional breakthroughs in SON technology.
Those aspects of LTE and LTE Advanced that enable SON innovation for equipment manufacturers and
service providers will, TI believes, constitute the greatest and most enduring value that 4G LTE technologies
have to offer, providing the tipping point for the industry to migrate from HSPA to LTE and eventually to LTE
Advanced in volume deployment.
Much is still in flux. Standards documents are evolving, equipment vendors are developing, and service
providers are evaluating and strategizing. As a result, programmable DSP processors provide the most
effective platform as the wireless infrastructure transitions to SONs.
Moreover, DSPs will prove to be the most efficient foundational technology moving forward, as additional
SON innovations are achieved and as the network is provisioned and tuned with SONs over time.

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