Local anomaly detection for mobile network monitoring

Huge amounts of operation data are constantly collected from various parts of communication networks. These data include measurements from the radio connections and system logs from servers. System operators and developers need robust, easy to use decision support tools based on these data. One of their key applications is to detect anomalous phenomena of the network. In this paper we present an anomaly detection method that describes the normal states of the system with a self-organizing map (SOM) identified from the data. Large deviation in the data samples from the SOM nodes is detected as anomalous behavior. Large deviation has traditionally been detected using global thresholds. If variation of the data occurs in separate parts of the data space, the global thresholds either fail to reveal anomalies or reveal false anomalies. Instead of one global threshold, we can use local thresholds, which depend on the local variation of the data. We also present a method to find an adaptive threshold using the distribution of the deviations. Our anomaly detection method can be used both in exploration of history data or comparison of unforeseen data against a data model derived from history data. It is applicable to wide range of processes that produce multivariate data. In this paper we present examples of this method applied to server log data and radio interface data from mobile networks.