Self Organizing Network Functions in 4G (LTE)

This paper deals with Self Organizing Network (SON) and its functions which play a very important role in the cellular network. Now a day’s networks are getting more complex to configure, optimize and maintain. Manually it becomes very difficult to monitor the number of network parameters of increasing number of base stations in the network. SON provides the solution to network problem without any manual intervention. In other words we can say that SON is used to reduce the CAPEX (Capital Expenditure) and OPEX (Operational Expenditure) of mobile operator. Many SON functions will give cost savings and performance benefits from the very beginning of a network deployment. SON has the self healing capability when any fault occurs in the network. Basically SON module in the LTE network consist of many function called as SON functions such as MRO (Mobility Robustness Optimization), CCO (Coverage and Capacity Optimization), ANR (Automatic Neighbor Relation), PCI (Physical Cell Identity), MLB (Mobility Load Balancing) etc.