Network management automation in 5G: Challenges and opportunities

The development of 5G cellular networks is driven by several architectural and radio technology evolutions; and by require-ments of diverse uses cases from the vertical industries that will be supported. Combined, these drivers demand for new ap-proaches and processes to be applied towards the automation of Network Management (NM) tasks so as to advance operability levels for mobile network operators (MNOs). This paper analyz-es the limitations of legacy Self-Organizing Networks (SON) introduced with 4G for Network Management Automation (NMA). In particular, we highlight the new challenges emerging from these 5G features and present several technological ena-blers that can be leveraged for 5G NMA. We include a future NMA framework combining these enablers, that addresses the NMA challenges by: 1) enhancing the level of intelligence in net-work elements, 2) allowing the networks to better process and analyze various kinds of network information, 3) enabling identi-fication of operational context and scenarios, and 4) leveraging the building and sharing of NM knowledge across different do-mains and networks.