Policy-driven workflows for mobile network management automation

Future wireless networks will experience a continuous growth regarding the number of network elements with increasingly complex interrelations between the configuration of multiple network elements. Another trend is the seamless integration of multiple radio technologies into a single wireless network. Both developments increase network management complexity and require new management concepts with a very high degree of automation. For this purpose, a novel management approach based on a combination of workflow and policy technologies is presented. The goal is to simplify and automate management tasks in mobile networks in order to raise the state of self-organization while the network still remains under control of the operator. The approach provides the means for a dynamic system to automatically adapt to context changes. Moreover, an experimental system is presented for the purposes of concept validation and evaluation along with a real world use case.