Hybrid automatic neighbor relations for 5G wireless networks

5G wireless networks aim to achieve seamless mobile broadband services, machine to machine and ultra-reliable low latency communications. These goals require massive improvements in terms of capacity, reliability, latency reduction, and scalability. Besides software defined networks and network function virtualization, self organizing networks (SON) is another enabling technology which makes 5G feasible. Automatic neighbor relations (ANR) is a prominent component of SON which has direct impact on reliability, scalability, and capacity of the wireless networks. When the current state of standardization and implementation of ANR functionality is considered, it is seen that a new approach is needed for ANR to comply with 5G requirements. Thus, in this paper a comprehensive hybrid ANR (H-ANR) architecture which leads to the management of relations utilizing an extensive set of universal performance criteria, configuration metrics, and measurements is proposed. The H-ANR functionality ranks the neighbors not based on instantaneous information but on historic values of the performance criteria and other metrics. The attributes of distributed ANR (D-ANR) module is also managed by H-ANR to prevent the repetitive addition of unwanted neighbors via D-ANR or X2 interface. Performance of the proposed H-ANR functionality is also compared with the case when only D-ANR is available on a Long Term Evolution Advanced network.