A Cognitive and Cooperative SON Framework for 5G Mobile Radio Access Networks

The continuous growth and evolution of the wireless systems into dense and complex heterogeneous scenarios has posed new challenges in terms of complexity for system configuration and optimization tasks. To address this problem, self-organizing networks functionalities are one of the key components in next generation mobile networks, since they enhance system performance and reduce operational expenditures. Inspired by concepts from autonomic network management, cognitive networks, and mobile-edge computing, this paper proposes a cooperative and cognitive SON framework (CCSON) for 5G mobile radio access networks. The main idea is to provide RAN elements with cognitive capabilities, so that they build and adapt models dynamically to support the self-organizing features. Finally, extensive simulations show the effectiveness of our approach for a load balancing scenario in heterogeneous LTE networks.