Network Management

This chapter looks more specifically at how the planning and optimization functions affect network management. Network management consists of element management systems (EMS) and actual network management systems (NMS). The NMS provides the following functionality: fault management, performance management, configuration management (CM), optimization and, lately, self‐organizing network (SON). The chapter discusses these management areas. Fault management provides a mechanism for operation and maintenance (O&M) connection supervision in the form of a heartbeat signal. Combined radio and backhaul measurement reporting helps to locate bottlenecks and enables accurate and efficient optimization and planning cycles to be set up for the network. NMS provides multiple interfaces for integrating the NMS as part of the operator tool chain, and in the case of CM the most important interface is the network‐planning interface. The planning of NMS is a part of the network operation and maintenance function and part of the whole mobile network planning.