Problem areas related to the development and validation of management strategies for UMTS

It is well known that the success of future cellular systems, especially, UMTS, will be coupled with the cost-efficient provision of QoS levels that are comparable with those of fixed systems. In this respect, planning tools, and sophisticated network and service management platforms, will play an important role in the commercial success of UMTS. This paper presents an approach, i.e., framework and set of problems, for managing UMTS networks. The areas addressed are the cost-effective accommodation of service provider requests, the management of the CDMA-based radio interface, and the development of an interactive (with the management mechanisms) simulation platform, for validation purposes.