Multi-service digital access network planning with the expert system RAMSES

The demand for ever new services from the subscriber community of a telecommunication network and the availability of new technologies is leading to an ever increasing complexity of the access component, i.e. of that part of the telecommunication network that joins the subscriber equipment to the local exchange. To cope with this demand, and to provide for optimum features of flexibility and reliability of the planned network, many constraints have to be taken into account. The planning activity is therefore becoming more and more heavy and its results are often conditioned by the skills and the experience of the planner. The expert system RAMSES was developed as an intelligent assistant to the planner of telecommunications networks. It helps the planner selecting the optimum access network among a large set of alternatives in a step-by-step way, taking into account several kinds of constraints. The knowledge base of RAMSES consists of the definitions of all the machines and links that can be placed in the networks, together with a set of rules that models both the constraints to be satisfied by the network and the heuristic knowledge applied during the planning process