Evaluation of the Automatic Neighbor Relation Function in a Dense Urban Scenario

Self-organizing network (SON) capabilities are an important feature of coming LTE networks. An automated configuration of neighbor cell lists, the so-called Automatic Neighbor Relation (ANR) function, is one of the first SON features being deployed in commercial networks. In this paper, we present simulation results of the convergence time of the ANR function in a dense urban scenario. We model the corresponding cell identifier measurements and the X2 setup in a detailed way. Our results show that even for sparse user densities, the network achieves good handover performance within the first two hours. We further propose a blacklist method which can significantly reduce measurement overhead in the mobile terminals during the network auto-configuration period.