The AAS can enable system optimization to be adaptive to traffic demands and address network evolution issues through flexible software re-configuration of the BS and antenna system. SON mechanism with OAM support can be beneficial to optimize the inter-operability of AAS operations for the following AAS capabilities:

1. Cell Shaping: where the main coverage of each cell is maintained unchanged but the cell edge can be adapted to load demand.
2. Cell Splitting: it adopts higher order sectorisation (vertical, horizontal or a combination) to an eNB by changing the coefficients of the antenna elements of an active antenna system (AAS) to form more antenna beams, each beam may be presented by one cell.
3. Cell Merging: the contrary functionality of Cell Splitting.

The present document studies how OAM supports the SON for AAS-based deployments.

The present document studies the OAM aspects of SON (Self-Organizing Network) for AAS (Active Antenna Systems) based deployments in LTE. The study includes use cases, potential requirements and possible solutions of OAM aspects of SON for AAS-based deployments in LTE, for both OAM centralized architecture and eNB distributed architecture with OAM supervision. The study also makes conclusions on the preferred solution(s), and provides recommendations based on the conclusions of the study.