Neighbor cell relation list and measured cell identity management in LTE

Radio network management simplification concerns to some extent the removal, not the simplification, of tasks. In this paper we present an approach for automatic network management in 3G long term evolution (LTE), namely, methods for automatic configuration of locally-unique physical cell identities and neighbor cell relation lists. We show that these issues can be removed from the list of planning tasks and completely replaced by autonomous algorithms. These algorithms make use of mobile measurements to detect local cell identity conflicts, resolve them, and to update the neighbor cell relation lists in the cells. The performance of the approach is determined using simulations of realistically deployed macro networks. The simulations illustrate the ability of the algorithms to resolve local cell identity conflicts. In particular, the algorithms are capable of both accommodating new cells and handling a worst case scenario where all cells are initiated with the same local cell identities and where neighbor cell relation lists are empty. The contributions in this paper are meant to aid operators by allowing them to replace time consuming and costly tasks with automatic mechanisms, thus, reducing operational expenditure.