FP7 ICT-SOCRATES

Cell Outage Management

in LTE Networks
M. Amirijoo (Ericsson),
L. Jorguseski (TNO ICT),
T. Krner (TU Braunschweig),
R. Litjens (TNO ICT),
M. Neuland (TU Braunschweig),
L. C. Schmelz (Nokia Siemens Networks),
U. Trke (Atesio)
Abstract
Cell outage management is a functionality aiming at automatically detecting and mitigating outages that
occur in radio networks due to unexpected failures. The FP7 EU-funded project SOCRATES (Self-
Optimisation and self-ConfiguRATion in wirelEss networkS) is heavily engaged in developing a framework
and solutions for cell outage management, where appropriate measurements, control parameters,
policies, assessment methodologies, and algorithms are being developed. Our vision is that radio
networks autonomously detect an outage based on measurements, from e.g., user equipment and base
stations, and alter the configuration of radio base stations such that coverage and service quality
requirements during an outage, as specified by the operator, are satisfied. In this presentation we give an
introduction in the area of cell outage management and present an overview of the results achieved so far
as well as the next steps that will be pursued.
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Introduction
Components in cell outage management
Operator policy
Measurement
Control parameters
Scenarios
Assessment criteria
Simulator
Future work
Outline
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The first release of the 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard has
been finalized
Operators require significant reduction of manual network management for
LTE
Introduction of self-organisation functionalities in LTE
Reduces manual network management
Enhances network performance
One aspect that benefits from self-organization is cell outage management
(COM), which consists of:
Cell outage detection
Cell outage compensation
Introduction
The standardisation body 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has finalised the first release
(Release 8) of the UMTS successor named as Evolved UTRAN (E-UTRAN), commonly known as Long Term
Evolution (LTE).
Wireless network operators today spend considerable manual effort in planning, configuring, optimising,
and maintaining their wireless access networks. These efforts consume a substantial part of their
operational expenditure (OPEX). Consequently, an important E-UTRAN requirement from the operators
side is a significant reduction of the manual effort in the deployment, configuration and optimisation
phases for this future wireless access system.
One way for achieving this requirement is the introduction of self-organisation functionalities into the E-
UTRAN. Self-organisation functionalities not only reduce the manual effort involved in network
management, but they also enhance the performance of the wireless network.
One aspect that benefits from self-organization is the management of cell/site outages, which can be
divided into two parts, namely, the detection of an outage and the compensation of the detected outage.
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Reasons for outages, e.g.:
hardware and software failures,
external failures such as power supply or network connectivity
Outages
may not be detected for hours or even days
may require manual analysis and unplanned site visits
Outage detection function must timely inform the operator about the
occurrence and the cause of an outage
Automatic compensation actions are triggered to alleviate performance
degradation
Introduction
There are multiple reasons for a cell outage, e.g., hardware and software failures (radio board failure,
channel processing implementation error etc), external failures such as power supply or network
connectivity failures, or even erroneous configuration. While some cell outage cases are detected by
Operations Support System (OSS) functions through performance counters and/or alarms, some may not
be detected for hours or even days. It is often through long term performance analysis and subscriber
complaints that these outages are detected. Currently, discovery and identification of some errors
involves sometimes manual analysis and may require unplanned site visits, which makes cell outage
detection a costly task. It is the task of the cell outage detection function to timely inform the operator
about the occurrence of an outage and the cause of the outage.
In the event of a cell outage detection, appropriate compensation methods are triggered to alleviate the
degraded performance due to the resulting coverage gap and loss in throughput by appropriately
adjusting radio parameters in surrounding sites. In general, human involvement shall only be triggered
when absolutely necessary, e.g., when manual repairs are needed.
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Components of Cell Outage Management
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Measurements
Detection
Compensation
Operator policy:
Coverage, QoS
Control
parameters
Cov. map
estimation
Simulation tools Scenarios Assessment criteria
Various measurements are gathered from the user equipments (UEs) and the base stations (called
eNodeBs in LTE). The measurements are then fed into the cell outage detection function, which detects
whether at the current time an outage has occurred and triggers the cell outage compensation function to
take appropriate actions.
The goal of cell outage compensation is to minimise the network performance degradation when a cell is
in outage. This is done by automatic adjustment of network parameters in order to meet the operators
performance requirements based on coverage and other quality indicators, e.g., throughput. It is realized
that performance requirements may not be achieved during an outage and, as such, the goal of the
compensation function is to meet performance requirements to the largest possible extent. Cell outage
compensation algorithms may for example alter the antenna tilt and azimuth, or the cell transmit power,
in order to cover the area that is in outage.
Altering the radio parameter of the neighbouring cells means that some of the UEs served by
neighbouring cells may be affected. For example, if the coverage of a neighbouring cell increases then this
implies that more UEs will be served and, consequently, the UE throughput may decrease. This should be
taken into account and an appropriate balance between coverage and other quality indicators (e.g.
throughput) should be achieved. This balance is indicated by means of an operator policy that governs the
actions taken by the cell outage compensation function.
In order to monitor and evaluate the actions taken by the cell outage compensation algorithm, there is a
need to estimate the coverage around the vicinity of the outage area. This is provided by the coverage
map estimation function, which continuously monitors the network coverage by means of measurements
and possibly prediction data.
There are also other activities being pursued along this work, namely, the development of simulation
tools, scenarios that capture different outage cases, and methods and criteria for assessing the impact
and performance of cell outage detection and compensation algorithms.
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In a cell outage situation an operator may still target at the ideal goal of
achieving the best coverage possible,
providing the highest accessibility, and
delivering the best possible quality in the cell outage area and all surrounding
cells.
All these goals cannot be fulfilled at the same time
the targets have to be weighted and/or ranked in order to provide quantitative
input to an optimisation procedure.
The optimisation goal itself may vary depending on the operators policy
coverage orientation
quality orientation
capacity orientation
Operator Policy
Every operator has its own policy for the network performance. For cell outage management the operator
wants to implement its policy into the network. For this, optimisation goals and a cost function have to be
defined.
In a cell outage situation an operator may still target at the ideal goal of
achieving the best coverage possible,
providing the highest accessibility, and
delivering the best possible quality in the cell outage area and all surrounding cells.
In most cases, all these goals cannot be fulfilled at the same time. As a consequence the targets have to
be weighted and/or ranked in order to provide quantitative input to an optimisation procedure.
The optimisation goal itself may vary depending on the operators policy. For example, one operator
wants to maximize its income also during the cell outage, whereas another operator may have also the
long-term user satisfaction in mind. In the first case an operator may target a high capacity sacrificing
coverage in a large area yielding a low perceived coverage, which is often worse for the reputation
compared to a higher blocking rate. Hence, the policy definition should be modular/flexible enough to
capture different operator strategies, e.g., coverage oriented operator vs. capacity oriented operator.
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Three groups of cells have to be distinguished:
the cell in outage ( )
all cells that are actively tuned by the COM algorithm ( )
all cells that are not actively tuned but influenced by the
network changes at all other cells ( )
Cells may have different optimisation goals and different
priorities
focus on coverage ( , )
focus on accessibility ( , )
focus on quality ( , )
The cost function has to take all these different foci into
account
Operator Policy
When defining the cost function it has to be decided which cells have to be taken into account. Therefore,
three groups of cells have to be distinguished: the cell in outage, all cells that are actively tuned by the
COM algorithms, and all cells that are not actively tuned by the COM algorithms but influenced by the
network changes at all other cells. This is shown in the upper figure. The cell in the centre is the cell in
outage. The first ring are all cells that are actively tuned by the COM algorithms. The second ring (outer
ring) are all cells that are not actively tuned but are influenced by the network changes at all other cells.
Optimisation goals may vary for different cells. For example, in cells covering large areas coverage should
be kept high, whereas in high-capacity cells located in the same region the focus will be more on
accessibility and/or quality. As a consequence the optimisation goals have to be defined on a cell-basis.
This concept is shown in the lower figure in which the different layouts of the cells represent different
foci. In addition to the different optimisation goals cells may have different importance, too, so that
different priorities are assigned to the cells.
The cost function has to take all important effects, such as coverage, accessibility, and quality, into
account. Normalised values are used in the cost function because it is easier to weight the normalised and
dimensionless values of the different criteria against each other. The reference value to which the criteria
are normalized, and the normalisation procedure have still to be defined.
Accessibility and quality can be assessed by key performance indicators (KPI) retrieved from counters
available in the network. The coverage can be estimated based on measurement reports. Therefore,
geographic coordinates of the mobile position or at least an estimation of these coordinates have to be
assigned to the obtained measurement reports. The main challenge here is how to accurately estimate
the position of the UE. It has to be investigated to which degree coverage can be estimated based on
measurement reports.
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Measurements
Continuous and event-triggered
measurements required for cell
outage management
Affected eNodeB: Counters and
KPIs, Timers, Alarms, Reports
Measurement Sources and Types:
Neighbour eNodeB: Counters and
KPIs, Timers, Alarms, Reports
User Equipment: Measurements,
Reports
Access Gateway: Alarms, Timers,
Counters
OSS System: Statistics
eNodeB1
eNodeB2
eNodeB3
eNodeB4
aGW
UE1
UE2
The following example nodes may be used when collecting the measurements.
eNodeB1 denotes the eNodeB that encounters a cell/sector outage or a complete node outage (marked
by a flash).
UE1 is served by eNodeB1 (shown by solid line). UE1 furthermore receives signal from neighbouring
eNodeBs 2 and 3 (shown by dotted line) and reports measurements to eNodeB1.
eNodeB2 eNodeB4 are neighbouring eNodeBs of eNodeB1. The X2 interface between affected eNodeB1
and neighbouring eNodeBs is shown by a dashed line.
UE2 is served by eNodeB2. Furthermore, UE2 receives signal from eNodeB1 (shown by dotted line) and
reports measurements to its serving eNodeB2.
Access Gateway (aGW) where affected eNodeB1 is connected to via S1 interface is shown by a dashed
line.
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Measurements - Details
Measurements from UE:
Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) / Channel Quality Identifier
(CQI)
Failure reports, e.g. after failed handover
Historic measurements
Measurements form aGW / OSS System:
Blocked / dropped calls counters
Alarms from eNodeBs / aGW
Measurements from eNodeB:
Cell capacity
Radio Link Failure (RLF) counter
Internal / External Handover failure rate
Relative Load Indicator
Resource status reporting
Cause information element
Interference
The following measurements may be useful when detecting and compensating an outage. It is to be
further investigated to see which of the measurements that are needed by the cell outage management
functions.
Cell Capacity: zero capacity or sudden decrease of capacity may indicate an outage
Radio Link Failure (RLF) counter: sudden increase may indicate a cell outage
Internal handover failure rate: high failure rate of internal handovers (between sectors / cells of one
eNodeB) may indicate the outage of a sector / cell
Incoming / outgoing handover failure rate: high inter-eNodeB handover failure rate towards dedicated
eNodeB may indicate outage of a sector of this eNodeB or the whole eNodeB
Relative load indicator: message is exchanged between neighbouring eNodeBs via X2 interface to
transfer load and interference coordination information. The indication of sudden interference level
decrease reported through load indicator messages may indicate a cell outage at the sending eNodeB
Resource status reporting: an eNodeB may request resource status from neighbouring eNodeBs via X2
interface. Different measurements can be requested, such as cell load or prioritised bit rates, e.g., speech
which is for further study (FFS), in standardisation. Suddenly changing values of measurements may
indicate cell outages, and the resource request could also be used to confirm potential outages that have
been indicated by other measurements
Cause Information Element: multiple X2 messages include the (mandatory) information element (IE)
"Cause", e.g. Handover Request, Handover Preparation Failure, Handover Cancel, Error Indication, X2
Setup Failure, eNodeB Configuration Update Failure, and Resource Status Failure. Relevant cause values
for cell outage management are: Cell not Available, Transport resource unavailable, Hardware
Failure. This information exchanged via X2 interface can be used for cell outage detection and cause
analysis
Interference measurements: sudden changes (reduction) in interference measurements taken by
eNodeB or UE may indicate outage of neighbour eNodeB; this is still a topic FFS
Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP): sudden decrease in received power level of serving or
neighbour cells may indicate a cell outage. RSRP includes measurements of serving and neighbouring cells
but is reported only to the serving eNodeB
Channel Quality Indicator (CQI): the CQI is a measurement about the radio channel quality of the serving
eNodeB which is taken by the UE, and reported only to the serving eNodeB. A sudden decrease of the CQI
level may indicate an upcoming cell outage of the serving eNodeB. On the other hand, a suddenly
increasing CQI may indicate the outage of a neighbouring eNodeB which may cause a decrease in channel
interference
Failure reports: failure reports are generated by the UE after connection or handover failures and sent to
eNodeB / OAM system for cause analysis. These reports can also be used for cell outage detection or
cause analysis
Historic measurements: the UE provides measurements such as RSRP, CQI and others to the serving
eNodeB during connection in case of a connection failure to the serving eNodeB (e.g. due to a cell
outage) the latest measurements are usually lost. These historic could be provided to the new serving
eNodeB after cell re-selection for failure cause analysis (FFS in standardisation)
Blocked / dropped calls: the number of blocked or dropped calls is counted by the eNodeB and by
default sent to the OAM system a sudden increase may indicate cell outage
Alarms from eNodeB / aGW: eNodeB and aGW send alarms to the OAM system in case of connection
failures, handover failures etc. These alarms could be used for cell outage detection and cause analysis
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Physical channel parameters
Power settings (e.g. downlink reference signal)
Control of the coverage/capacity trade-off (increase/decrease cell sizes)
Antenna parameters
Tilt, azimuth (only if adjustable remotely, e.g., remote electrical tilt RET)
Control of the coverage/capacity trade-off
Multi antenna techniques
E.g., Steer beam pattern to coverage hole
Home-eNodeB related parameters (FFS)
Improve coverage by temporarily carrying macro layer traffic by Home-eNodeBs
Reduce interference caused by Home-eNodeBs to improve coverage
of macro layer
Control Parameters
The power allocated to physical channels dictates the cell size. One the one hand, by increasing the
physical channel power the coverage area of a cell can be increased (in order to compensate for outage).
On the other hand, by lowering the cell power the cell area is reduced and as a consequence load and
interference caused by the cell can also be reduced.
Modern antenna design allows influencing the antenna pattern and the orientation of the main lobe by
electrical means (e.g., remote electrical tilt, beam forming) . This is the basis for an on-line control of the
antenna characteristics and thus provides the option to modify the characteristics according to the needs
of self-organisation. In case of a cell outage, the footprint of the surrounding cells change as one or more
cells "disappear". The changes in the footprints are coincidental. As part of cell outage management,
these changes may be controlled as to optimize network coverage and load balancing among the
remaining cells.
The consideration of Home-eNodeB for outage compensation is for further study, because the
implementation details of Home-eNodeBs are not yet completely fixed. Two aspects are currently
foreseen as possible options. First, if there are sufficient Home-eNodeBs in the outage area, these may
take over some macro-layer traffic, once a macro-level sector/eNodeB has failed. The feasibility of this
approach depends on whether it is possible to open Home-eNodeBs for access by UEs. Second aspect, is
that Home-eNodeB users if operating in the same spectrum - cause UL interference to the macro-layer.
During an outage, resulting in a high distance between UE and a functioning eNodeB, the coverage might
be significantly reduced by the UEs connected to Home-eNodeBs. A possible approach is to turn Home
eNodeBs off whenever there is an outage or at least decrease the transmission power of UE served by
Home eNodeBs.
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Scenarios
The developed cell outage management algorithms are assessed for different
scenarios, comprising
Outage scenarios: type and extent of failure
Evaluation scenarios: considered network, traffic and environment scenarios
COM mechanism: detection (COD) vs compensation (COC)
Key outage scenarios
Sleeping site/sector due to physical channel failure
COD: methods depend on failing channel
COC: similar methods as below
Whole site/sector failure
COD: no foreseen need of algorithm
COC: compensation using control parameters
Transport network link failure
COD: no foreseen need of algorithm
COC: X2 failure may affect HO performance and the
effectiveness of ICIC

X
2
X
2
The objective is to formulate a number of scenarios that are considered in the development and
assessment of cell outage management methods. These scenario descriptions comprise three key
elements (i) the considered outage scenario, e.g. sleeping sites/cells, failing sites/cells or failing transport
network links; (ii) assumptions regarding network, traffic and environment aspects for which useful
deployment of cell outage management solutions is anticipated; and (iii) whether cell outage detection
and/or cell outage compensation methods are/should be developed.
A distinction is made between four categories of outage scenarios: (i) physical channel failures causing
sleeping sites/sectors; (ii) whole site/sector failure (where failure is reported to OSS); (iii) transport
network link failures; and (iv) other types of malfunctions, e.g. reduced performance due to hardware
aging.
In category (i) different subcases can be distinguished offering different potential for (primarily) cell
outage detection solutions, depending on the actual physical channel that fails, e.g. the synchronisation
channel, reference signal, broadcast information, paging channel or user plane transmission. The type of
control/signalling channel that fails influence e.g. whether network/mobile-originating calls or handovers
can be supported, which in turn affects the possibilities for developing cell outage detection methods.
In category (iii), a distinction is made regarding the type of transport network link that fails, e.g. in case all
S1 links to an eNodeB fail, the site is entirely unfunctional (as in category (ii)), whereas if an X2 link fails,
handovers (HOs) may endure additional delays as they will be handled via S1 links, and inter-cell
interference coordination (ICIC) algorithms could no longer function, which affects capacity and/or
coverage.
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Scenarios
Evaluation scenarios
Impact of eNodeB density and load
More COC potential in a dense capacity-driven network layout
Impact of service type
More COC potential in an area with predominantly low-bandwidth service, e.g. VoIP
telephony
Impact of outage location
More COC potential if a cell/site
outage occurs at the inner part
of an LTE island
Also study impact of:
user mobility
spatial traffic distribution
propagation aspects
UE terminal class
The following evaluation scenarios have been formulated for the development of cell outage
compensation methods. Furthermore, the priority of the evaluation scenarios is given.
Impact of eNodeB density and traffic load: in a sparse, coverage-driven network layout, little potential
exists for compensating outage-induced coverage/capacity loss. In a dense, capacity-driven network
layout, this potential is higher, particularly when traffic loads are low. Priority: high.
Impact of service type: the distinct elasticity and quality of service requirements of different services
affect the compensation potential. For instance, compensation actions may be able to alleviate local
outage effects to handle only low bandwidth services. Priority: high.
Impact of outage location: if cell outages occur at the edge of an LTE island fewer neighbours exist to
help compensate. For outages in the core of such an LTE island, the compensation potential is larger.
Priority: medium.
Impact of user mobility: if mobility is low (high), few (many) users spend a relatively long (short) time in
an outage area. The perceived outage impact depends on the delay-tolerance and elasticity of the service.
Priority: medium.
Impact of spatial traffic distribution: if traffic is concentrated around sites, such traffic is typically
relatively far away from neighbouring sites and hence the compensation potential is limited. If traffic is
concentrated in between sites, the potential is larger. Priority: medium.
Impact of propagation aspects: the higher the path loss exponent (higher frequency bands, more
urbanised environments), the more difficult it may be to cover such users with relatively remote
compensation cells in case of an outage. Furthermore, a higher shadowing variation (also primarily
depending on the propagation environment) may allow more distant cells to serve calls in an outage area.
Priority: low.
Impact of UE terminal class: the higher a UEs maximum uplink transmit power (class-dependent) the
lower the need for outage compensation, since it may still be able to attach to a more distant cell even
without compensation measures. The potential for cell outage compensation is higher, since retuned
surrounding cells may be more able to serve such a user. Priority: low.
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Assessment Criteria Cell Outage Detection
Detection delay = T
detect
- T
fail
Detection probability = N
detect
/N
fail
False detection probability = N
false
/(N
false
+ N
detect
)
Other: signalling overhead, processing overhead, severity indication accuracy
F
Detection Delay
D D
True Detection
F
Missed Detection False Detection
T
fail
T
detect
time
F
Detection Delay
D D
True Detection
F
Missed Detection False Detection
T
fail
T
detect
time
F
D Failure occurrence Failure detection Failure duration F
D Failure occurrence Failure detection Failure duration
A so-called failure duration interval is associated with each failure, which starts with the occurrence of a
failure and ends with the elimination of the failure (e.g., by repairing the error involved). A true detection
is a detection which is reported by the cell outage detection mechanism during the failure duration
interval. In contrast a false detection is reported outside the failure duration interval.
The following abbreviations are used:
T
fail
is the time instant when the failure occurred
T
detect
is the time instant when the failure is detected
N
detect
is the number of detections within the failure duration interval (true detection)
N
fail
is number of failures observed during the simulation
N
false
is the number of detections outside the failure duration interval (false detection)
Signalling Overhead can be divided into two parts:
Transport network signalling overhead captures all data that is transmitted over the transport network,
e.g., between eNodeBs (X2), between eNodeB and MME (S1), and eNodeB and OSS (Itf-S) measured in
either number of messages sent / time unit / eNodeB or bytes sent / time unit / eNodeB.
Radio interface signalling overhead captures the communication needed between a UE and an eNodeB
in order to facilitate outage detection. This is measured using the number of resource blocks / time unit /
eNodeB scheduled for cell outage detection specific communication.
Processing overhead refers to the amount of processing needed to detect the outage. The execution time
of a particular algorithm typically depends on the size n of the input data, e.g., number of measurements,
and can be asymptotically logarithmic (log n), polynomial (n
a
), or even exponential (a
n
). An analysis of
asymptotic execution time gives an insight in the processing demand of an algorithm.
Assume that there are n
L
levels of severity, where each severity is characterized by multiple factors, e.g.,
reduction in QoS, capacity, and coverage. Let L
detector
denote the severity indication level estimated by the
detection algorithm and L
true
be the true severity indication level, i.e., the level classified if true network
conditions are known. The level estimation accuracy A
L
is a function of L
detector
- L
true
, e.g., A
L
= |L
detector
-
L
true
|. Non-linear variations of A
L
may also be considered, e.g., A
L
= (L
detector
- L
true
)
2
.
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Assessment Criteria Cell Outage Compensation
Call blocking ratio; Call Dropping ratio; Throughput, etc.
Coverage [%] = (N
bin
N
bin_outage
)/N
bin
Other metrics such as convergence time per cell
Margin 1
T
i T
SS2
T
SS1
Ti me
Margin 2
Coverage
Throughput
Convergence Ti me
Network Performance
(Coverage, Throughput)
The following definitions are used:
Call blocking ratio is the ratio of the number of blocked calls to the number of calls that attempt to access
the network
Call dropping ratio is the probability that an existing call is dropped before it is finished i.e. the ratio of
the number of dropped calls to the number of calls that are accepted by the network.
Throughput is the rate of successful data delivery measured in bits per second or data packets per
second, and calculated as the number of bits (or packets) that are successfully delivered in a certain time
period, divided by the length of that time period.
N
bin
is the number of pixels within the cell
N
bin_outage
is the number of pixels in outage, i.e. pixels having average SINR or data rate lower than a pre-
defined threshold
T
i
is the outage detection time
T
SS1
is the time instant of steady state for the cell throughput
T
SS2
is the time instant of steady state for the cell coverage
The convergence time is defined as the difference between the time the outage compensation algorithm
reaches a steady state on the network performance and the time outage is detected. This is measure of
how fast the compensation algorithm reconfigures the network. Different network performance metrics
can be considered here. In the figure above, coverage and throughput performance metrics are chosen
for illustration.
The convergence time of coverage is obtained by T
SS2
- T
i
for one cell (similar definition is used for, e.g.
throughput). The margins (Margin 1 and 2) presented in the figure are used to set some allowed deviation
to the final state of performance. Margin 1 can be considered e.g. 1%, meaning that coverage can
oscillate between the steady state plus or minus 1%. T
SS2
is set to the earliest time after which coverage is
within margin 1. The convergence time in the area under consideration is obtained as the maximum of
convergence times of all the cells involved in the cell outage compensation.
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Simulator
Monte-Carlo based static simulator
will be used for cell outage
compensation due to
Simpler modeling and
Faster execution time
At each iteration an eNodeB
(sector):
Samples/gathers performance
Updates radio parameters
The time between two iterations is
assumed to be in the order of
minutes or tens of minutes
Small correlation between the
samples
Correlation is ignored
UE generation
Simulate PHY, RRM etc
Sample Performance
Compensation Algorithm
Final
snapshot?
No
R
o
u
n
d

o
f

a
l
g
o
r
i
t
h
m

i
t
e
r
a
t
i
o
n
Pathloss (G-matrix)
Cell Selection
It is assumed that a compensation algorithm runs over several iterations. For each snapshot the following
steps are carried out:
UEs are distributed randomly across the network
The pathloss between each UE and base station is calculated, adding the lognormal fading, and stored to
a so-called G-matrix. Distance attenuation and lognormal fading are kept constant during the execution of
a snapshot
UEs perform cell selection based on best server (RSRP)
Physical layer and radio resource management (RRM), e.g., scheduler and power control, models are
executed.
The performance is sampled and statistics is collected.
The cell outage compensation algorithm is executed. If needed the algorithm is executed every X
snapshots depending on whether sufficient statistics is gathered
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Socrates will continue the work on cell outage detection and compensation
Next steps involve:
Simulator implementation (finished by April 2009)
Controllability studies (finished by May 2009)
Observability studies (finished by May 2009)
Intermediate report D4.2A (finished by Oct 2009)
Algorithm development and evaluation (beginning of 2010)
Publications and reports
Future Work
Next steps involve modelling various aspects of LTE and implementing simulators for cell outage
compensation and coverage map estimation. The simulator implementation is planned to be finished by
April 2009.
A controllability study will be carried out in order to see to what degree an outage can be compensated
(by manual means) as well as to understand the relation between control parameters and overall goal and
assessment criteria of cell outage compensation. For example, a study will be carried out to understand
the impact of antenna tilt on coverage and quality. The controllability study is planned to be finished by
May 2009.
The questions that will be addressed in the observability study deal mostly with to what degree
measurements, counters etc from the network can aid in
detecting an outage,
estimating the impact of compensation measures and the performance of the compensation function,
and
estimating the coverage in the network
The observability study is planned to be finished by May 2009.
There will be an intermediate report finalized by Oct 2009. Algorithms for cell outage detection and
compensation will be developed using the knowledge obtained in the controllability and observability
study. The algorithm development and evaluation is planned to be finished by beginning 2010. Socrates
will publish results in project deliverables, conferences, and journals.
16
WWW.FP7-SOCRATES.EU
17/20 17/20
M. Amirijoo (Ericsson), mehdi.amirijoo@ericsson.com
(presenting author)
L. Jorguseski (TNO ICT), ljupco.jorguseski@tno.nl
T. Krner (TU Braunschweig), t.kuerner@tu-bs.de
R. Litjens (TNO ICT), remco.litjens@tno.nl
M. Neuland (TU Braunschweig), m.neuland@tu-bs.de
L. C. Schmelz (Nokia Siemens Networks), lars.schmelz@nsn.com
U. Trke (Atesio), tuerke@atesio.de
Contact
Thank you very
much for
your attention
FP7 ICT-SOCRATES