Distributed Coordination of Self-Organizing Mechanisms in Communication Networks

The fast development of the self-organizing networks (SON) technology in mobile networks renders critical the problem of coordinating SON functionalities operating simultaneously. SON functionalities can be viewed as control loops that may need to be coordinated to guarantee conflict-free operation, to enforce stability of the network, and to achieve performance gain. This paper proposes a distributed solution for coordinating SON functionalities. It uses Rosen's concave games framework in conjunction with convex optimization. The SON functionalities are modeled as linear ordinary differential equations. The stability of the system is first evaluated using a basic control theory approach. The coordination solution consists in finding a linear map (called coordination matrix) that stabilizes the system of SON functionalities. It is proven that the solution remains valid in a noisy environment using stochastic approximation. A practical example involving three different SON functionalities deployed in base stations of a long-term evolution network demonstrates the usefulness of the proposed method.