Towards Cognitive Autonomous Networks

1The Need for Cognitive Autonomy in Communication Networks

Stephen S. Mwanje, Christian Mannweiler, and Henning Sanneck

Nokia Bell Labs, Munich, Germany

Communication networks have significantly evolved to the point that they have become very complex to operate. Concurrently, the demands placed thereon by the different stakeholders continue to increase. Users require more diversified, robust yet cheaper services; operators require network operation to be cheap and simple with short lead times to introduce new services while governments demand ubiquitous networks offering reliable services.

At the core of meeting all these demands is network automation – increasing the capabilities of networks to undertake more and more operational tasks which have historically been done manually. This already is an ongoing process, but as we motivate the next level of automation, we must look deep into the structure of networks to identify the areas of greatest promise for automation. This chapter takes this deep evaluation to set the baseline for the subsequent discussion. It seeks to answer these questions: (i) why do we need to pursue the path towards cognitive autonomy in networks? What is the gap between where we are now and the final destination of a Cognitive Autonomous Network (CAN)?

The chapter presents a high‐level overview of communication networks and the related Network Management (NM). It highlights the complexity of networks as justification for Network Management Automation ...