The concept of Self Organising Networks (SON) is driven in the telecommunications industry by network operators as a way of reducing cost of operating the networks. This will be especially important with the introduction of home base stations also known as home eNodeBs, which will be part of the telecommunications network run by the network operator, but installed at homes of the end users. This makes the task of managing the network a big challenge due to the number of the home base stations and the fact that they will be supplied by different vendors. A self organising network may provide mechanisms for self-configuration and self-discovery that enable network devices (managed elements) of the SON to be transparent to ordinary users (e.g. the home eNodeB installed in the home of an individual user). SON networks also ensure robustness of the network during dynamic changes of network topology and link breakages. Operational and maintenance (OAM) architecture of a self organising network includes a domain manager (DM) and its managed elements (ME), an enterprise management system (EMS) and other elements of the network.
The present solutions defined in 3GPP standards require heavy involvement of the Network Management System (NMS) that needs very detailed knowledge of static Network Resource Models (NRM), interactions and semantics of the internal and external relationships between these models. This known approach is difficult to scale, or at least scaling it up by adding potentially millions of home eNodeBs will make the management layer thicker and more distributed. All that will additionally cause substantial increase of OAM traffic going up and down the hierarchy of the network.