Impact-time concept for SON-Function coordination

Starting with the introduction of LTE, there is a high operator initiated demand for management automation. All automation requirements on network configuration, optimisation, and failure recovery are subsumed under the term Self-Organising Networks (SON). Within a SON a potentially larger number of SON-Functions individually perform specific management tasks. To prevent conflicting behaviour among different SON-Functions a SON-Coordinator is used that has to consider a variety of conflict types and the spatial and temporal impact of the SON-Functions. The Impact-time concept is composed of a set of time intervals describing the pair-wise temporal interdependency of SON-Functions, and also expressing restrictions in the availability of performance data. An experimental validation of the concept is presented.