Actix, a specialist in automatic optimization solutions, is to deliver the world's first commercial Self-Optimizing Network (SON) system for LTE networks during 2009.
SON virtually eliminates human involvement for network planning and optimization and is a central element of the vision advocated by both the 3GPP and the Next Generation Mobile Networks Group, enabling a new way of managing the performance and maintenance of 4G radio access networks.
Managing the radio access network already accounts for a large part of operators' total operational costs and LTE networks are set to inflate these costs further as operators strive to meet the enormous capacity demands, which users are expected to inflict on mobile networks through high bandwidth data services. The introduction of LTE will mean operators have to learn about very new and very different ways to manage the RAN more efficiently, more intelligently and at a lower cost.
"Actix' SON solutions will save mobile network operators more than 60% of their operational engineering costs because an enterprise-scale SON system can harvest massive amounts of live network data, collate it in real time, accurately diagnose and prioritize huge numbers of problems and then fix them, automatically, live, online," said Chris Larmour, Actix CMO. "SON is one of the main reasons we have been pushing so hard to build a reliable, enterprise grade platform over the last three years. It's only when you combine this kind of scalable operational platform with RF optimization know-how that you get a true SON solution. Actix will be delivering SON nodes to advanced LTE customers later this year" he continued.
SONs are intelligent networks where base stations self-optimize their operational algorithms and parameters in response to changes in network, traffic and environmental conditions. If a cell or site should fail, self-healing methods are also implemented to resolve any resulting coverage/capacity gaps. As operators expand their networks with the addition of new base stations they will be self-configured in a ‘plug-and-play' fashion.
Actix' SON solution builds on the company's existing capabilities to enable fast, accurate and reliable engineering fixes to be generated and applied automatically to the radio access network in real time. In a new departure for the company, Actix will also be providing SON as a packaged network node, running on reliable, scalable hardware platforms.
"Actix is uniquely positioned to deliver true SON solutions because we have 20 year's automatic RF optimization experience, and this application combines many of our existing capabilities," said Richard Kateley, Actix CTO. "We already have the largest library of vendor-neutral data interfaces in the industry, some of the best radio network optimization know-how encapsulated in pluggable software modules, the world's only real-time RF diagnostic solution, and Actix One – our enterprise-grade network status management platform – is routinely processing terabytes of network data every day in live deployments. This combination of components is unique to Actix, enabling us to deliver the world‘s first live, online SON system for operational LTE networks during 2009."