Model-based Alarm Correlation in Cellular Phone Networks
Peter Fröhlich, Wolfgang Nejdl, Klaus Jobmann und Hermann Wietgrefe
Abstract
Though cellular phone networks already contain intelligent network
elements diagnosing local faults, alarm bursts caused by network
element failures cannot be handled properly by this technology. It is
the responsibility of the operators to extract the relevant alarms
from such a burst and identify the cause. To assist the operators,
several alarm correlation tools have been developed.
The current paper introduces a model--based solution to the problem of
alarm correlation. We use an abstract simulation model to predict the
propagation of alarm messages through the network. By comparing the
predicted behavior with the actual alarm pattern, the cause of the
alarms is identified. The paper describes the model and its
implementation, as well as first results obtained on a representative
set of test cases.
The full paper is available as a postscript
file and as html file.