Self-Organising Network (SON)

The vision of self-organizing networks (SON), which is in line with the views of 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) and the NGMN (Next Generation Mobile Networks) group, is that future radio access networks needs to be easier to plan, configure, manage, optimize and heal compared to how it used to be.SON has been codified by the 3GPP Release 8 specifications in a series of standards including 36.902^\ as well as public white papers outlining use cases from the NGMN.

The first technology making use of SON features will be UMTS Long Term Evolution. The LTE specification inherently supports SON features like Automatic Neighbor Relation (ANR) detection, which is the 3GPP LTE Rel. 8 flagship feature.
Newly added base stations should be self-configured in line with a ‘plug-and-play’ paradigm, while all operational base stations will regularly self-optimize parameters and algorithmic behavior in response to observed network performance and radio conditions. Furthermore, self-healing mechanisms can be triggered to temporarily compensate for a detected equipment outage, while awaiting a more permanent solution.