The 8th Annual IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference - Wireless Consumer Communication and

Networking

Effectiveness of Cell Outage Compensation in LTE

Networks
M. Amirijoo1, L. Jorguseski2, R. Litjens2 and R. Nascimento2
1

Ericsson, Linkping, Sweden, 2 TNO ICT, Delft, The Netherlands

mehdi.amirijoo@ericsson.com, {ljupco.jorguseski,remco.litjens,renato.nascimento}@tno.nl

Abstract Cell outage management is a self-healing

functionality in future mobile cellular networks, aiming to
automatically detect cell or site level outages (cell outage
detection) as well as to mitigate as much as possible the caused
degradation of coverage, capacity and/or service quality (cell
outage compensation). Cell outage compensation has a variety of
control parameters (and combination thereof) at its disposal in
surrounding cells/sites, including the reference signal power PRS,
antenna tilt, scheduling parameters and the uplink target
received power level P0. By appropriately tuning these control
parameters, the outage-induced performance effects can be
minimised, in terms of some operator-specified balance of
relevant performance metrics. This paper analyses the
effectiveness of selected control parameters in mitigating the
effects of cell/site outages, learning that the antenna tilt and P0
are most effective in restoring coverage, while P0 is most effective
in restoring user throughput performance.

I. INTRODUCTION
Cell outage management (COM) is an integral part of the
self-organising network concept in E-UTRAN (Evolved
UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network) [1]-[5], with the
objective to enhance the network robustness and resilience,
and to minimise the outage-induced decrease in operator
revenue and/or the customer satisfaction. COM comprises cell
outage detection (COD) and cell outage compensation (COC).
The aim of COD is to automatically identify the occurrence
and scope of an outage, while COC aims at automatic
mitigation of the performance degradation by an appropriate
adjustment of suitable radio parameters (e.g. antenna tilt,
power settings) in surrounding cells. Such compensation is
governed by the operator policy which specifies the desired
performance tradeoffs in the outage area.
Figure 1 depicts the different elements and workflow of
COM in future cellular networks. The depicted example is
characterised by a site outage, whose pre-outage service area
is indicated in red. A variety of measurements, such as alarms,
counters or key performance indicators, are gathered by the
user terminals, the base stations and/or the operations and
maintenance (O&M) center, and fed to the cell outage
management algorithms. Fed with these measurements, the
cell outage detection function then determines whether, where
and what type of outage has occurred, and triggers both the
cell outage compensation function as well as the operators
maintenance department for possible manual repair. The cell
outage compensation function translates its measurement
input to compensation measures in terms of an adaptation of
one or more control parameters in surrounding cells, in line

978-1-4244-8790-5/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

with the operator-formulated policy regarding the trade-off of

local and regional performance effects. Cell outage
compensation is likely to be characterised by an iterative
process of radio parameter adjustment and evaluation of the
performance impact until convergence is reached. Important
feedback is provided by the so-called X-map estimation
function, which processes measurements including location
information in order to generate e.g. coverage or performance
maps. Refer to [16] for a more elaborate discussion of cell
outage management.
Control
parameters

Operatorpolicy

Compensation

Xmap
estimation

Detection

Measurements

O&M

Figure 1: Overview of cell outage management.

The issue of optimising the coverage and capacity in
wireless cellular networks has already been addressed in the
literature via e.g. off-line optimisation approaches
[6][7][8][9][10]. Coverage and capacity are optimised by
appropriately tuning the pilot power, antenna tilt and azimuth.
Although such off-line optimisation methods may provide
useful suggestions, for COC it is important to develop
methods that adjust involved parameters on-line and in realtime in order to timely respond to the outage. Further, some
approaches consider single-objective optimisation (for
instance capacity), whereas we believe that multiple
objectives (like some combination of coverage and quality)
need to be considered. Recent studies [11] also address the
real-time automatic reconfiguration of the base stations
neighbouring the outage area via rule-based and genetic
algorithms. This downlink-only study assumes that base
stations do not fully utilize the available transmission power
in nominal operational mode and have a kind of power
budget available to compensate for the outage situation. In
practical deployments such a power budget is unlikely, as base
stations generally utilise full power in order to best provide

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coverage and quality. In this paper we present a quantitative

analysis of the compensation potential of different control
parameters in mitigating outage-induced performance
degradations in LTE (Long Term Evolution) networks,
considering both the up- and downlink. Such a controllability
study is a logical first step before developing COC algorithms.
The outline of the paper is as follows. Section II discusses
control parameters that are potentially effective for COC
purposes. In Section III we describe a number of relevant
scenarios for the development and assessment of cell outage
compensation solutions. The assessment approach is outlined
in Section IV, followed by the numerical results in Section V.
Section VI ends this paper with some concluding remarks.
II. CONTROL PARAMETERS
In this section we describe a list of radio parameters that are
potentially effective in achieving the compensation objectives.
An extensive quantitative assessment is needed to assess the
relative effectiveness of different control parameters, and
thereby lay the foundations for algorithm development. In
principle all radio parameters that somehow affect coverage
and the spatial aspects of capacity and service quality, are
potentially relevant from a cell outage compensation
perspective. These control parameters include the following.
x Physical channel transmit power (downlink) The
transmit power allocated to the downlink physical
channels determines the cell size. By increasing the
physical channel power in cells surrounding an outage,
the service area of those cells can potentially be extended
to cover all or part of the outage area. Alternatively, by
lowering the physical channel power in some surrounding
cells, the interference footprint of those cells in the outage
area may be reduced, possibly enabling other surrounding
cells to serve the outage area. In the typical case a cells
total transmit power is already at its maximum, the split
between (primarily) the reference signal (RS) and the
physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) can be
adjusted [12], for instance raising the RS power PRS to
enhance coverage, at the cost of a reduced PDSCH power
and hence a reduce traffic handling capacity.
x PUSCH (physical uplink shared channel) target received
power level (uplink) Uplink transmit powers are
typically derived from a (possibly user-specific) target
received power density P0, in combination with a path
loss compensation factor E, both of which are broadcast
by the eNodeB [13][14]. Control parameter P0 can be
used to enhance the coverage probability in case of an
outage: reducing P0 lowers inter-cell interference levels
and allows more remote terminals to connect to a given
base station. This coverage enhancement leads to a higher
number of served users per cell and hence comes at the
cost of a lower per-user data throughput. A further
negative effect on the user throughput is due to the lower
achievable modulation and coding scheme (MCS) per
resource block. Effectively, the cell then trades service
quality for enhanced coverage. Alternatively, it can be

regarded as a trade-off between cell throughput and celledge user throughput.

x Antenna parameters Modern antenna design allows
electrical (non-mechanical) adaptation of both the
orientation of the main antenna lobe and the antenna
pattern, e.g. via remote electrical tilt or beam forming
techniques. Extensive studies for WCDMA-based
systems reveal that antenna tilt is a highly responsive
lever when it comes to shaping the cell footprint and the
interference coupling with other cells [15]. These capabilities are therefore of great potential for COC purposes.
x Packet scheduling parameters Modern mobile
networking technologies generally feature a shared
channel operation, with channel access managed by a
channel-adaptive packet scheduler. Such channeladaptive packet schedulers typically come in different
operator-tuneable flavours, that primarily differ in their
trade-off between resource efficiency and spatial fairness.
Typically, an associated scheduling parameter exists
which provides an opportunity to effectively shift
resources towards remote users and hence a potentially
effective means for cell outage compensation.
Besides the above-mentioned primary control parameters,
other control parameters exist that may require an update as
consequence of outage-induced parameter adaptations. For
instance, changes in PRS and/or antenna tilts may influence
neighbour relations and mobility parameters and hence require
these to be updated. The analysis presented in this paper will
concentrate on PRS, P0 and the antenna tilt.
III. SCENARIOS
In this section a few scenarios are identified that are
deemed relevant for the pursued controllability studies. The
relevance of the scenarios lies therein that they capture a
diversity of case studies representing a variety of network,
traffic and propagation conditions, where higher or lower
compensation gains are anticipated. A selection of key
scenarios is briefly described below:
x Impact of eNodeB density and traffic load In a sparse,
coverage-driven network layout, little potential is likely
to exist for compensating outage-induced performance
loss. In a dense, capacity-driven network layout, however,
this potential is significantly higher. This is particularly
true when traffic loads are low, considering the relatively
high available capacity and low interference levels.
x Impact of service type/mix The distinct quality of
service requirements of different services affect the
compensation potential. For instance, in case of only low
bandwidth services, it is much more likely that adjacent
cells can provide coverage to the relative remote users in
the outage area. The service mix determines the relative
traffic load associated with such low bandwidth services
and hence also the compensation potential.
x Impact of spatial traffic distribution If traffic is located
mainly near sites, the compensation potential is limited
since the UEs are relatively far away from neighbouring

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and compensating sites. Alternatively, if traffic is

concentrated in between sites, the potential is larger.
Refer to [16] for a more elaborate discussion of these and
other scenarios, for instance related to the impact of mobility,
the location of an outage area or the propagation environment.
The analysis presented in this paper will address scenarios
that differ in the eNodeB density (inter-site distance) and the
traffic load. Scenario specifications are given in Section V.
IV. ASSESSMENT APPROACH
In this section we outline the assessment approach of the
controllability study, consisting of methods to deal with the
inherent dimensionality of the problem and considerations
regarding the assessment of the relative effectiveness of the
different control parameters. The dimension of the considered
problem is determined by the number of considered cells
involved in the outage compensation, the number of control
parameters and the number of possible settings of these
parameters. A further distinction is made between a site and a
cell outage, which doubles the number of relevant cases.
Figure 2 illustrates (part of) the assumed hexagonal layout
surrounding a site (left) or cell (right) outage. The outage cells
are marked with a light red shade. Surrounding cells whose
radio parameters are adapted for the purpose of cell outage
compensation are marked with an arrow pointing in the
direction of the associated main antenna lobe. With the
colours of these arrows the assumed cell grouping is indicated,
which is based on symmetry arguments: cells whose arrows
have the same colour have the same orientation towards the
outage area and will therefore be treated identically when
varying control parameter settings. As illustrated by the figure,
in case of a site outage, there are two such cell groups (blue
and green cells), while in case of a cell outage there are three
such cell groups (blue, green and red cells). For reasons of
readability and space limitation, we only cover the site outage
case in the remainder of the paper.
SITE OUTAGE

user is deemed satisfied if there is coverage at its location and

it experiences an up- and downlink throughput at least equal
to D times the requested up- and downlink throughput. Herein,
a location is called covered if three conditions are satisfied:
(i) the RS SINR exceeds -6 dB; (ii) the RS received power
(RSRP) exceeds -127 dBm; and (iii) the experienced SINR on
the DL and UL is high enough to support the lowest MCS, i.e.
SINR  -6.5 dB. Further, the choice of operator policy
parameter D indicates the relative importance of coverage and
throughput in the performance assessment. Note that in the
event of an outage, a different operator policy may apply than
during nominal operation, e.g. placing greater emphasis on
providing coverage. The metric is assessed over the first tier
of sectors surrounding outage, i.e. those capturing the traffic
previously served by the outage site and, thus, compensating
for the outage effects. For a given choice of D, the optimal
choice of e.g. ('TA,'TB) can be obtained for each scenario.
This exercise is repeated for all scenarios and for all three
investigated control parameters, i.e. the reference signal power
PRS, the uplink target received power level P0 and the antenna
tilt, keeping the untouched control parameters at their default
(pre-outage) setting. A comparison of the potential of such an
optimised control parameter setting in mitigating the outageinduced performance degradations, will give an indication of
the extent to which the outage effects can indeed be mitigated
by means of cell outage compensation and which control
parameter(s) is/are most effective in doing so.
V. NUMERICAL RESULTS
The sensitivity analysis is performed using a Monte Carlobased LTE network simulator. We consider a hexagonal
layout of 193 cells, as recognisable in Figure 3. Key system
parameters are listed in Table 1 (largely based on [17]).
Table 1: Key system parameters.

CELL OUTAGE

Capacity-driven layout

Coverage-driven layout

Inter-site distance

500 m

2200 m

Antenna downtilt

15o

5o

System bandwidth
PMAX,BS, PRS, PMAX,UE
Path loss
Shadowing
Antenna model
Noise level

Figure 2: Site/cell outage scenarios and cell grouping.

Considering e.g. antenna tilt as a control parameter, whose
impact of the local performance is to be investigated in a postoutage scenario, we are evaluating the performance effects of
different pairs ('TA,'TB), where 'Ti denotes the change in
antenna tilt applied to all cells in group i {A,B} and A and
B refer to the green and blue cell groups as marked in
Figure 2 (left), respectively.
The performance achieved by a given choice of ('TA,'TB)
is expressed in terms of the fraction of satisfied users, where a

Service

10 MHz
46 dBm, 33 dBm, 25 dBm
128.1 + 37.6 log10 r, with r in km
V = 8 dB, inter-site correlation of , decorrel.
distance = inter-site distance / 15
3GPP 3D model
-199 dBW/Hz in DL, -195 dBW/Hz in UL
Generic elastic data service with a requested
throughput of 1 Mb/s (DL) & 250 kb/s (UL)

The considered scenarios are specified by the inter-site

distance and the traffic load. The coverage-driven network
layout is characterised by an inter-site distance of 2200m and
a default (pre-outage) antenna downtilt of 5o. For this layout
we consider only a low traffic load of (on average) 1 UE per
cell (with a traffic model as given in Table 1). The capacitydriven network layout is characterised by an inter-site distance

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of 500m, a default antenna downtilt of 15o, and low, medium

or high traffic loads of (on average) 1, 23 and 47 UEs per cell.
In the simulator, the users throughput requirements are in
principle satisfied with a location- and interference-dependent
amount of resources, while in case of cell congestion, the
performance of all served users is fairly degraded.
In search for the optimal control parameter value, a limited
range of practical settings is considered. The reference signal
power PRS is varied from 27 to 39 dBm, with a default setting
of 33 dBm (on average about 5% of the total maximum
transmit power, assuming a uniform power distribution over
all control and data symbols). The uplink target received
power level P0 is varied from -114 dBm to -78 dBm (-132
dBm to -96 dBm), with a pre-optimised default setting of -96
dBm (-114 dBm) in the capacity-driven (coverage-driven)
network layout. Finally, the antenna tilt is varied between 0o
to 20o, with a default setting of 5o in the coverage-oriented
network layout and 15o in the capacity-oriented layout.
For the high load scenario with the capacity-oriented
network layout, Figure 3 shows spatial plots of the coverage
(showing holes with a coverage probability < 95%), average
up- and downlink throughputs (columns). The rows are
showing the performance for the pre-outage situation, the
post-outage situation without compensation and the postoutage situation with a P0, antenna downtilt or PRS, that are
optimised under an operator policy specified by D = 0.05, i.e.
with a principal interest in providing coverage. The optimised
settings of P0 are -108 dBm for cell group A directed towards
the outage area, and a P0 of -105 dBm for the cell group B that
are directed sideways (see Figure 2). The plots illustrate the
outage-induced performance effects (coverage and throughput
degradation), as well as the degree of compensation that is
achieved by optimising P0, downtilt or PRS in the sectors
adjacent to the outage area. Observe that, in line with the
chosen operator policy, the coverage is restored to nearly
100% in the outage area, which however comes at the cost of
a further throughput degradation in the outage area.
The optimised antenna downtilt settings are 10o and 12o for
cells in groups A and B, respectively, i.e. a significant
reduction of the pre-outage tilt settings applied in order to
direct the antennas more towards the outage area. Compared
to the optimised P0 settings, these antenna adjustments yield a
slightly worse coverage but a somewhat better uplink
throughput. Note that when P0 is used to enhance coverage,
this also affects the uplink throughput: a lower P0 leads to
lower applied MCSs per resource block and (hence) also an
increased contention level for uplink resources. The optimised
PRS setting are 39 dBm for all compensating cells, i.e. an
increase of 6 dB compared to the default setting. Since the
uplink is the bottleneck direction in the considered scenario,
optimisation of PRS is less effective in enhancing coverage.
Rather, the significant increase of PRS required to achieve the
slight coverage improvement, comes at a significant reduction
of downlink throughput. This is due to the decreased transmit
power availability for the PDSCH. The latter effect also
explains the observation that the uplink throughput remains
relatively high, compared to the cases with optimised P0 or tilt.

Figure 4 shows for all four scenarios the fraction of

satisfied users, which considers both coverage and quality
aspects, and is evaluated over the sectors surrounding the
outage area. The post-outage optimised performance, in terms
of satisfied user ratio, is shown for all three control parameters.
Consider the bottom-right scenario (capacity-driven
network layout with a high traffic load) and assume a
primarily coverage-driven operator policy specified by D =
0.05 (left-most bar for each case). Observe that the fraction of
satisfied users (which for this choice of D pretty much equals
the coverage probability) equals 100% in the pre-outage
situation. This then drops to about 91% due to the site outage,
recalling that this is measured over the first tier of sectors
surrounding the outage area; hence the coverage loss in the
outage area itself is significantly more dramatic. As shown,
this coverage loss can be fully restored to 100% by
appropriate tuning of the antenna tilt or P0. As discussed
above (and illustrated in Figure 3), restoring the coverage
probability to such a level may come at a throughput sacrifice.
Note that optimisation of PRS cannot fully restore the coverage
loss, since for several users coverage condition (iii) (see
Section IV) remains unsatisfied. Similar insights apply for the
cases of D = 0.10 and D = 0.20, although for the latter choice,
even with optimised compensation the resulting performance
falls significantly short of the pre-outage situation. Still, there
is a clear improvement compared to the post-outage situation
without any compensation actions, thereby clearly indicating
the benefits of cell outage compensation.
For higher choices of D, the focus on user throughput
becomes rather large, and optimisation of e.g. P0 may achieve
a fraction of satisfied users that even exceeds the pre-outage
level. Although this possibility may at first seem
counterintuitive, it is noted that the pre-outage network is
planned with a healthy mix of coverage and service quality
targets, in particular requiring a coverage probability of 98%.
For these higher Ds, however, the optimisation of
compensation parameters tends to sacrifice coverage for
enhanced throughput. For instance, an increase in P0 reduces
the coverage of a cell and therefore captures less traffic. Both
the higher P0 (via a higher MCS) and the reduced contention
level lead to a throughput enhancement. Since for high Ds
throughput weighs relatively strong compared to coverage,
this may indeed lead to a higher fraction of satisfied users than
the default P0 applied in the pre-outage scenario.
Comparing the different scenarios, note that the outageinduced performance degradations and also the (potential)
compensation gains are larger for more heavily loaded
scenarios, as long as service quality is not of insignificant
relevance in the operator policy (D not too small). This is due
to the fact that for lower traffic loads, cells surrounding an
outage area have more resources available to serve additional
traffic. Furthermore, observe that the tilt and P0 are the most
effective control parameters when the policy is primarily
coverage-oriented, while optimisation of P0 is most effective
when the policy is predominantly quality-oriented (which
implicitly states that the uplink is typically the bottleneck).

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UPLINK USER
THROUGHPUT

DOWNLINK USER
THROUGHPUT

POST-OUTAGE SITUATION
WITH OPTIMISED PRS

POST-OUTAGE SITUATION
WITH OPTIMISED TILT

POST-OUTAGE SITUATION
WITH OPTIMISED P0

POST-OUTAGE SITUATION
WITHOUT COMPENSATION

PRE-OUTAGE SITUATION

COVERAGE

Figure 3: For the scenario with a capacity-driven layout and a high traffic load, these spatial plots show the coverage
holes and the up-/downlink user throughputs (in Mb/s) for the pre-outage situation, the post-outage situation without
compensation and the post-outage situation with optimised P0, antenna downtilt and PRS.

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CAPACITY-DRIVEN LAYOUT (LOW LOAD)

1

0.8

0.8

FRACTION OF SATISFIED USERS

FRACTION OF SATISFIED USERS

COVERAGE-DRIVEN LAYOUT (LOW LOAD)

1

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.6

0.4

0.2

0
pre-outage (reference)

PRE-OUTAGE
(REFERENCE)

post-outage (no
post-outage (optimised
POST-OUTAGE
POST-OUTAGE
compensation)
tilt)
(NO COMPENSATION) (OPTIMISED TILT)

post-outage (optimised
POST-OUTAGE
P_0)

(OPTIMISED P0)

post-outage (optimised
POST-OUTAGE
P_RS)

pre-outage (reference)

PRE-OUTAGE
(REFERENCE)

(OPTIMISED PRS)

post-outage (optimised
POST-OUTAGE
P_0)

(OPTIMISED P0)

post-outage (optimised
POST-OUTAGE
P_RS)

(OPTIMISED PRS)

CAPACITY-DRIVEN LAYOUT (HIGH LOAD)

0.8

0.8

FRACTION OF SATISFIED USERS

FRACTION OF SATISFIED USERS

CAPACITY-DRIVEN LAYOUT (MEDIUM LOAD)

post-outage (no
post-outage (optimised
POST-OUTAGE
POST-OUTAGE
compensation)
tilt)
(NO COMPENSATION) (OPTIMISED TILT)

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.6

0.4

0.2

0
pre-outage (reference)

PRE-OUTAGE
(REFERENCE)

post-outage (no
post-outage (optimised
POST-OUTAGE
POST-OUTAGE
compensation)
tilt)
(NO COMPENSATION) (OPTIMISED TILT)

post-outage (optimised
POST-OUTAGE
P_0)

(OPTIMISED P0)

post-outage (optimised
POST-OUTAGE
P_RS)

pre-outage (reference)

PRE-OUTAGE
(REFERENCE)

(OPTIMISED PRS)

post-outage (no
post-outage (optimised
POST-OUTAGE
POST-OUTAGE
compensation)
tilt)
(NO COMPENSATION) (OPTIMISED TILT)

post-outage (optimised
POST-OUTAGE
P_0)

(OPTIMISED P0)

post-outage (optimised
POST-OUTAGE
P_RS)

(OPTIMISED PRS)

Figure 4: For four distinct scenarios, the fraction of satisfied users is shown for the pre-outage situation, the post-outage
situation without compensation and the post-outage situation with optimised control parameters. For each case, six bars
are shown for different settings of the operator policy parameter D = {0.05,0.10,0.20,0.30,0.40,0.50} (from left to right).
VI. CONCLUDING REMARKS
In this paper we presented an overview of the envisaged
cell outage management functionality in future mobile
networks. We have discussed the key control parameters that
are potentially effective in mitigating outage-induced
performance degradations and have presented an analysis of
their effectiveness in different scenarios. Key insights
provided by the analysis include the observation that both the
compensation gains and the most effective control parameter
depend on the load and the applied operator policy. Among
the considered control parameters, the uplink target received
power level P0 and the antenna tilt have proven to be most
effective in improving coverage, while P0 is most effective in
improving throughput. In our continued research, we further
extend the presented sensitivity analysis, including other
(combinations of) control parameters, and proceed to develop
on-line algorithms for cell outage compensation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The presented work was carried out within the EUsponsored FP7 SOCRATES project [18].
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