Femtocell and Flexible Base Station cognitive management

In this paper we discuss on the cognitive management of wireless infrastructures that encompass Flexible Base Stations (FBSs) and Femtocells investigated by the Integrated Project E3 (End-to-End-Efficiency) funded within FP7. FBSs are equipped with Software Defined Radio (SDR) transceivers capable of operating the appropriate Radio Access Technologies (RATs) while Femtocells are capable of changing their operating parameters, including the way to manage the Mobile Terminals (MTs). The necessary reconfiguration actions are provided by the network decision entity called Dynamic Self-organizing Network Planning and Management (DSNPM). DSNPM is enhanced with optimization procedures as well as cognitive functionalities that will provide the means for proper network adaptation to the environment changes in timely manner. Our work presents an approach for the overall optimization procedure, exploiting FBSs and Femtocells software and hardware capabilities as well as knowledge and experience gained from past interactions of DSNPM with the network environment. High level system architecture will be presented describing the problem statement and the solution approach in which the above aspects will be addressed. Finally, an indicative scenario will exhibit the efficiency of FBSs and Femtocells functionalities as well as the associated cognitive management functionalities of DSNPM.