Decentralized Configuration of Neighboring Cells for Radio Access Networks

In order to execute a handover processes in a Radio Access Network, each cell has a configured list of neighbors to which such handovers are made. Rapid re-configuration ofthe neighborhood list in response to network failures and other events is currently not possible. To address this problem this paper suggests an autonomic approach for dynamically configuring neighboring cell lists and introduces a decentralized, three-layered framework. As a key element of this framework, a novel probabilistic protocol that detects and continuously tracks the coverage overlaps among cells is presented and evaluated. The protocol called DOC maintains a distributed graph of over-lapping cells. Dae to asing Bloom filters and aggregation techniques it exhibits a low traffic and computational overhead. A first series of simulation studies suggests that DOC is scalable with respect to network size and the namber of terminals.