Method and apparatus for increasing performance of communication links of communication nodes

• US 9,668,223 B2
• Filed: 04/20/2015
• Issued: 05/30/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 05/05/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: ISCO International Inc.
• Original Assignee: ISCO International Inc.
• Inventors: Seoane, Jorge, Komoravolu, Krishna, Wang, Zhigang, Galeev, Mikhail, Abdelmonem, Amr, Reichard, Jr., Gordon
• Primary Examiner(s): Onamuti, Gbemileke J
• Application Number:
  US14/690,725
• Publication Number:
  US 20150318945A1
• Time in Patent Office: 771 Days
• CPC Class Codes: H04J 11/005 of intercell interference
• CPC Class Codes: H04J 11/0066 of narrowband interference narrowband interference reduction H04B1/1036
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/0021 in which codes are applied as a frequency-domain sequences, e.g. MC-CDMA
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/0023 Time-frequency-space
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/006 Quality of the received signal, e.g. BER, SNR, water filling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/0073 Allocation arrangements that take into account other cell interferences for intercell interference mitigation or co-ordination in orthogonal multiplex systems H04J11/005
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/02 Arrangements for optimising operational condition
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/08 Testing, supervising or monitoring using real traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/10 Scheduling measurement reports ; Arrangements for measurement reports
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 52/241 taking into account channel quality metrics, e.g. SIR, SNR, CIR, Eb/lo
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 52/243 taking into account interferences
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/541 using the level of interference
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/542 using measured or perceived quality
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 88/08 Access point devices

Abstract

A system that incorporates aspects of the subject disclosure may perform operations including, for example, obtaining performance parameters in a communications network, identifying a degradation in performance of one or more nodes of the communications network according the monitored performance parameters, and initiating corrective action to mitigate the degradation in performance of the one or more nodes of the communications network. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

obtaining, by a system including a processor, a first baseline average power across a frequency range and a plurality of cell sites;

determining, by the system, a first threshold from the first baseline average power that is obtained;

obtaining, by the system, Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) measurements at the plurality of cell sites;

determining, by the system, whether one or more of the SINR measurements are below the first threshold;

initiating, by the system, corrective action to improve a SINR measurement of an affected cell site and corresponding path of the plurality of cell sites responsive to the SINR measurement of the affected cell site and corresponding path falling below the first threshold;

obtaining, by the system, a second baseline average power across the frequency range and the plurality of cell sites;

determining, by the system, a second threshold from the second baseline average power that is obtained; and

determining, by the system, whether the corrective action has improved the SINR measurement of the affected cell site and corresponding path according to the second threshold.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising reversing at least in part, by the system, the corrective action responsive to determining that the corrective action has not improved the SINR measurement of the affected cell site and corresponding path.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining, by the system, whether the corrective action has reduced a SINR measurement of other cell sites and corresponding paths responsive to determining that the SINR measurement of the affected cell site and corresponding path has improved.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising reversing at least in part, by the system, the corrective action responsive to determining that the SINR measurement of one or more other cell sites and corresponding paths has been reduced below an undesirable SINR threshold.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the first threshold is determined according to a time of day, an event affecting operations of the plurality of cell sites, a key performance indicator (KPI), or any combination thereof.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the initiating of the corrective action further comprises adjusting one or more KPIs of the affected cell site and corresponding path.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the SINR measurement for each of the plurality of cell sites comprises an average of SINR measurements according to a sampling size.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the corrective action comprises filtering adjacent signals, adjusting gain of an uplink, filtering interference signals, utilizing diversity signal paths, adjusting a pilot signal, adjusting transmit parameters, adjusting receive parameters, adjusting a modulation scheme, adjusting a coding scheme, adjusting a position of an antenna to reshape a coverage, or any combination thereof.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein an interference component of the SINR measurement is based on measurements of signals that exceed an inter-cell threshold.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the inter-cell threshold comprises an average of inter-cell signal measurements.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein the inter-cell threshold is above a thermal noise level.

12. A system, comprising:

a processor; and

a memory that stores executable instructions that, when executed by the processor, facilitate performance of operations, comprising;

determining a first threshold from a first baseline average power obtained across a frequency range and a plurality of cell sites;

obtaining Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) measurements from the plurality of cell sites;

identifying a SINR measurement of the SINR measurements that is below the first threshold;

identifying an affected cell site of the plurality of cell sites from which the SINR measurement was obtained;

initiating corrective action to improve the SINR measurement of the affected cell site;

determining a second threshold from a second baseline average power obtained over the frequency range and the plurality of cell sites; and

determining whether the corrective action has improved the SINR measurement of the affected cell site according to the second threshold.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the operations further comprise determining whether the corrective action has reduced one or more SINR measurements of one or more other cell sites of the plurality of cell sites.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the operations further comprise reversing at least in part the corrective action responsive to determining that one or more SINR measurements of one or more other cell sites has been reduced.

15. The system of claim 12, wherein the operations further comprise reversing at in part the corrective action responsive to determining that the corrective action has not improved the SINR measurement of the affected cell site.

16. The system of claim 12, wherein the operations further comprise reversing at in part the corrective action responsive to determining that the corrective action has marginally improved the SINR measurement of the affected cell site.

17. The system of claim 12, wherein the SINR measurement of the affected cell site corresponds to the SINR measurement of a sector or path of the affected cell.

18. A machine-readable storage medium, comprising executable instructions that, when executed by a processor, facilitate performance of operations, comprising:

determining a first threshold from a first baseline average power obtained across a frequency range and a plurality of cell sites;

obtaining signal to noise measurements from the plurality of cell sites;

determining that a first signal to noise measurement from the signal to noise measurements is below the first threshold;

identifying an affected cell site of the plurality of cell sites from which the first signal to noise measurement was obtained;

determining whether an initial signal to noise measurement of the affected cell site changed to the first signal to noise measurement responsive to corrective action initiated by a first cell site of the plurality of cell sites to improve a signal to noise measurement of the first cell site, wherein the first cell site and the affected cell site are different cell sites; and

adjusting at least in part the corrective action initiated by the first cell site to improve the first signal to noise measurement of the affected cell site responsive to determining the initial signal to noise measurement changed to the first signal to noise measurement responsive to corrective action initiated by the first cell site.

19. The machine-readable storage medium of claim 18, wherein the operations further comprise determining whether the first signal to noise measurement of the affected cell site has improved.

20. The machine-readable storage medium of claim 18, wherein the signal to noise measurements comprise signal to interference plus noise ratio measurements.

21. The machine-readable storage medium of claim 20, wherein one or more noise figures of the signal to interference plus noise ratio measurements comprises thermal noise, in-band co-channel interference, adjacent band noise, interference from foreign cell sites, out-of-band noise, or any combinations thereof.

22. The machine-readable storage medium of claim 18, wherein the signal to noise measurements obtained from the plurality of cell sites excludes measurements associated with control channels used by the plurality of cell sites to communicate with other communication devices.

23. The machine-readable storage medium of claim 18, wherein the signal to noise measurements obtained from the plurality of cell sites comprises signal to noise measurements from each cell site, signal to noise measurements from each path of each cell site, signal to noise measurements from each sector of each cell site, an average of signal to noise measurements from multiple paths of each cell site, an average of signal to noise measurements from multiple sectors of each cell site, an average of signal to noise measurements from each cell site, an average of signal to noise measurements from clusters of cell sites, or any combinations thereof.

24. The machine-readable storage medium of claim 18, wherein the signal to noise measurements obtained from the plurality of cell sites are associated with uplink communication channels or downlink communication channels used by the plurality of cell sites, and wherein the operations further comprise directing the plurality of cell sites to balance a performance of the uplink communication channels in relation to a performance of the downlink communication channels by obtaining uplink or downlink performance parameters from the plurality of cell sites, obtaining information associated with corrective actions initiated by the plurality of cell sites, or a combination thereof.

25. A method, comprising:

determining, by a system including a processor, a first performance threshold from a first baseline average power obtained across a plurality of cell sites;

obtaining, by the system, performance measurements for each of the plurality of cell sites;

determining, by the system, whether one or more of the performance measurements are below the first performance threshold;

initiating, by the system, corrective action to improve a performance measurement of an affected cell site and corresponding path of the plurality of cell sites responsive to the performance measurement of the affected cell site and corresponding path falling below the first performance threshold;

determining a second performance threshold from a second baseline average power obtained over the plurality of cell sites; and

determining, by the system, whether the corrective action has improved the performance measurement of the affected cell site and corresponding path according to the second performance threshold.

26. The method of claim 25, wherein the performance measurements comprise Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) measurements.

27. The method of claim 25, further comprising:

receiving uplink performance measurements for an uplink of a first cell site of the plurality of cell sites, wherein the uplink is used by the first cell site for receiving first data from communication devices; and

directing the first cell site to adjust operational parameters relating to a downlink according to the uplink performance measurements, wherein the downlink is used by the first cell site for transmitting second data to the communication devices.

28. The method of claim 27, wherein the uplink performance measurements comprise noise data, interference mitigation data, or a combination thereof, and wherein the noise data comprises thermal noise, in-band co-channel interference, adjacent band noise, interference from foreign cell sites, out-of-band noise, or any combinations thereof.

29. The method of claim 25, further comprising:

receiving downlink performance measurements for a downlink of a first cell site of the plurality of cell sites, wherein the downlink is used by the first cell site for transmitting first data to communication devices; and

directing the first cell site to adjust operational parameters relating to an uplink according to the downlink performance measurements, wherein the uplink is used by the first cell site for receiving second data from the communication devices.

30. The method of claim 29, wherein the downlink performance measurements comprise a resource block schedule, gain data associated with the downlink, antenna orientation information, or any combinations thereof.

31. The method of claim 25, wherein the performance measurements comprise key performance indicators (KPIs).

32. The method of claim 31, wherein the KPIs comprise network traffic, data throughput, ineffective connection attempts by communication devices to establish a communication session with a cell site, uplink and downlink data volume, or any combinations thereof.