Sequential Proximity-Based Clustering for Telecommunication Network Alarm Correlation

Alarm correlation for fault management in large telecommunication networks demands scalable and reliable algorithms. In this paper, we propose a clustering based alarm correlation approach using sequential proximity between alarms. We define two novel distance metrics appropriate for measuring similarity between alarm sequences obtained from interval-based division: 1) the two-digit binary metric that values the occurrences of two alarms in neighboring intervals to tolerate the false separation of alarms due to interval-based alarm sequence division, and 2) the sequential ordering-based distance metric that considers the time of arrival for different alarms within the same interval. We validate both metrics by applying them with hierarchical clustering using real-world cellular network alarm data. The efficacy of the proposed sequential proximity based alarm clustering is demonstrated through a comparative study with existing similarity metrics.