Demo: SONVer: SON verification for operational cellular networks

The Self-Organizing Networks (SON) concept includes the functional area known as self-healing, which aims to automate the detection and diagnosis of, and recovery from, network degradations and outages. Changes to the configuration management (CM) parameters for network elements could be a cause for degraded network performance and stability; hence, the verification of their effects becomes crucial. In this paper, we present SONVer, a tool that performs SON verification, using anomaly detection and diagnosis techniques that operate within a specified spatial scope larger than an individual cell. SONVer automatically classifies the state of the network in the presence of CM changes, indicating the root cause for anomalous conditions. SONVer uses Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and CM history from real cellular networks to determine the state of the network; visualize anomalies at a large scale; and identify the causes of anomalies and the group of cells that were affected.