Reduction of operational efforts and complexity are key drivers for RAN Long Term Evolution. One of the important aspects to this is that the system operability is improved under multi vendor environment. It is of importance that measurements and performance data of different vendors share the same "language." Such alignment is easing ease network performance analyses and problem finding, and reduces efforts in maintaining the network at a properly working state. It is also of interest to minimise operational effort by introducing self configuring and self optimising mechanisms. A self optimising function shall increase network performance and quality reacting to dynamic processes in the network. Especially in the early deployment phase, the efforts to set up and optimise are significant and traditionally lead to lengthy periods of getting an optimum and stable system setup. It is thus essential to have the necessary set of self configuration and self optimisation mechanisms already available when initial deployment starts. As such, standardisation is asked to define the necessary measurements, procedures and open interfaces to support better operability under multi vendor environment. Such standardised functions shall also facilitate self configuration and self optimisation under multi vendor environment. Especially the interaction between self configuring/optimizing networks and O&M has to be considered.

The present document provides descriptions of agreed use cases and solutions with regards to self configuring and self optimizing networks. The scope of the self configuring and self optimizing functionality is defined in TS 36.300.