The demand for anywhere, anytime communication is increasing, and the end users (subscribers) are demanding broadband speed coupled with seamless mobility. Consequently, new technologies are being developed and deployed to accomplish the vision of all-IP and broadband – like performance in mobile networks.

The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is working on a new radio interface, which provides high bandwidth e.g., 100Mbit/s downlink termed as “Long Term Evolution (LTE)”. The 3GPP’s System Architecture Evolution (SAE) initiative is working on network architecture to achieve the vision of All-IP based Packet Network. This network architecture is characterized as a simple and a flat IP network infrastructure. The combination of LTE’s higher bandwidth capabilities and SAE’s flat IP network architecture fulfills the requirements of Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN), also referred to as 4G networks.   

Additional to providing higher throughput and all IP network concepts, the 4G NGMN networks are capable of supporting numerous additional automation functionalities such as; Self Configuration, Self healing etc, collectively termed “Self Organizing Networks (SON)”. The SON functionality is thus very appealing from a mobile operator perspective due to its direct impact on the “costs” of the operations.

The current networks (2G, 3G) in contrast have poor automation and, configuration changes to the network require manual intervention and result in high operational effort. So, it is of great interest for operators to minimize such operational efforts by reducing the need and effort of manual intervention. The SON concepts are primarily focused on fulfilling automation requirements and provide a vital value-proposition, reduced “operational cost” by introducing self-organizing mechanisms, for the mobile network operators.