Self-Organizing Networks: Self-Planning, Self-Optimization and Self-Healing for GSM, UMTS and LTE

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Multi-Technology Self-Healing

Juan Ramiro, Raúl Moya, Juan Carlos del Río, Mehdi Amirijoo, Remco Litjens, Khalid Hamied, Nizar Faour, Carlos Úbeda, Gustavo Hylander and Javier Muñoz

6.1. Self-Healing Requirements for 2G, 3G and LTE

As stated in Chapter 2, Self-Healing can be defined as the execution of the routine actions that keep the network operational and/or prevent disruptive problems. In this context, the Self-Healing terminology has been adopted to cover the categories in [1] that are related to Fault Management (FM), Fault Correction and Operation And Maintenance (O&M). In other words, to comprehend the detection and correction/mitigation of problems, as well as the availability of functionalities facilitating smooth system maintenance with minimal outage. This term, which has been adopted by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) along the same lines [2], may look overly ambitious. The reason is that there are occasions in which the Self-Healing functionalities can only point out the existence (and possibly the root cause) of a problem, but the automatic generation of an immediate remedy that does not require user intervention is not feasible. In other cases, however, it is feasible to automatically derive and implement a temporary solution that alleviates certain problems.

The need for automation in this field is aggravated by the deployment of new, complex technologies and the launch of new multimedia and broadband services for an ever-demanding customer ...