Automatic Site Identification and Hardware-to-Site-Mapping for Base Station Self-Configuration

One of the key requirements that come with the introduction of next generation mobile networks is the automatic provisioning and configuration of new network elements. This targets to reduce on the one hand the time required between the introduction of new hardware until it is fully functional and on the other hand the overall configuration overhead. Hardware should be setup without requiring any preconfiguration and without manual configuration after the on-site installation. A required enabler is the automatic acquisition of the site informa- tion where a network element has been set up at. Only if this is possible further autoconfiguration steps can be successfully executed. Automatic site identification provides the means to assess the location and the information required to map location information to a site defined by network planning. An analysis shows that depending on the network setup and the deployment scenario automatic hardware to site mapping shows different degrees of complexity that need to be handled. In addition to the analysis of deployment scenarios and their individual site identification and mapping solutions a combined solution that is capable to perform site identification and hard- ware to site mapping based on the context of the new Network Element is proposed.