Radio Resource Management in Multi-Tier Cellular Wireless Networks

CHAPTER 9

SELF-ORGANIZING SMALL CELL NETWORKS

Small cell networks such as femtocell networks have to be designed not only to support users' QoS requirements, but also to achieve cost effectiveness, deployment flexibility, and scalability. These capabilities are needed to meet the requirements of both customers and service providers. The femto access points are usually deployed by the users without prior planning. To reduce capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operation expenditure (OPEX), the concept of self-organizing network (SON) has been introduced in the different wireless standards (e.g., 3GPP Long Term Evolution [LTE]) [1]. This concept can also be adopted in the femtocell networks. The SONs are expected to automatically organize, operate, optimize, and maintain themselves with minimum control from external entity and intervention of users. In general, the SON includes three functionalities, that is, self-configuration, self-optimization, and self-healing. While the self-configuration functionality is related to the initialization and installation (i.e., pre-operational) stage of the network, self-optimization and self-healing functionalities are required in the operational stage, which will impact the performance and availability of the services.

In this chapter, the concept of self-organization in small cell networks is presented. First, the motivations behind self-organization are discussed, which naturally arise due to a large number of small cells and the complex network ...