Network monitoring in LTE small cell environment

In Small cell environment, network monitoring is required so that Home eNB (evolved node base-station) can perform self operations to configure itself, maintain the services by organizing itself and in case of any failure can heal itself. NMM (Network Monitor Mode) is a part of physical layer that does the sniffing of neighbor cells and helps in the monitoring of the network. It can be accessed through FAPI (Femto Application Platform Interface). This paper addresses the technological challenges in validation of neighbor cell sniffing. Network can have single to multi cell environment. Typically, small cell network consists of multiple cells to fulfill the high data rate requirements. During sniffing, NMM module has different set of challenges when there is a single or multiple neighbor cells. In a dense network, environment changes frequently and it becomes difficult for Home eNB to maintain list of neighbor PCID (Physical cell Identifier). In that case, exhaustive sniffing is done which is performed using blind decoding to sniff all of the neighbor eNB. When Home eNB is aware of network environment, it does directed sniffing. There are different procedures from upper layers to enable NMM module for different strategic implementations. This paper covers all of these procedures along with validation details. The scope of this paper is PHY implementation and validation of NMM that cover all functional groups which includes RSSI, RSRP, Sync (Synchronization Information), PBCH (MIB) and BCCH (All SIBs) decoding. This paper will cover NMM procedures, Call Flows, real time field deployment use-case, validation setup, validation-processes etc. Additionally, this will also discuss validation steps, debug tools and functional results. This paper will be an attempt to define and quantify different parameters to adopt technology for network monitoring.