A SON Solution for Sleeping Cell Detection Using Low-Dimensional Embedding of MDT Measurements

Automatic detection of cells which are in outage has been identified as one of the key use cases for Self Organizing Networks (SON) for emerging and future generations of cellular systems. A special case of cell outage, referred to as Sleeping Cell (SC) remains particularly challenging to detect in state of the art SON because in this case cell goes into outage or may perform poorly without triggering an alarm for Operation and Maintenance (O&M) entity. Consequently, no SON compensation function can be launched unless SC situation is detected via drive tests or through complaints registered by the affected customers. In this paper, we present a novel solution to address this problem that makes use of minimization of drive test (MDT) measurements recently standardized by 3GPP and NGMN. To overcome the processing complexity challenge, the MDT measurements are projected to a low-dimensional space using multidimensional scaling method. Then we apply state of the art k-nearest neighbor and local outlier factor based anomaly detection models together with pre-processed MDT measurements to profile the network behaviour and to detect SC. Our numerical results show that our proposed solution can automate the SC detection process with 93 accuracy

Leveraging intelligence from network CDR data for interference aware energy consumption minimization

Cell densification is being perceived as the panacea for the imminent capacity crunch. However, high aggregated energy consumption and increased inter-cell interference (ICI) caused by densification, remain the two long-standing problems. We propose a novel network orchestration solution for simultaneously minimizing energy consumption and ICI in ultra-dense 5G networks. The proposed solution builds on a big data analysis of over 10 million CDRs from a real network that shows there exists strong spatio-temporal predictability in real network traffic patterns. Leveraging this we develop a novel scheme to pro-actively schedule radio resources and small cell sleep cycles yielding substantial energy savings and reduced ICI, without compromising the users QoS. This scheme is derived by formulating a joint Energy Consumption and ICI minimization problem and solving it through a combination of linear binary integer programming, and progressive analysis based heuristic algorithm. Evaluations using: 1) a HetNet deployment designed for Milan city where big data analytics are used on real CDRs data from the Telecom Italia network to model traffic patterns, 2) NS-3 based Monte-Carlo simulations with synthetic Poisson traffic show that, compared to full frequency reuse and always on approach, in best case, proposed scheme can reduce energy consumption in HetNets to 1/8th while providing same or better Qo

Control and data channel resource allocation in OFDMA heterogeneous networks

This paper investigates the downlink resource allocation problem in Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) consisting of macro cells and small cells sharing the same frequency band. Dense deployment of small cells overlaid by a macro layer is considered to be one of the most promising solutions for providing hotspot coverage in future 5G networks. The focus is to devise an optimised policy for small cells’ access to the shared spectrum, in terms of their transmissions, in order to keep small cell served users sum data rate at high levels while ensuring that certain level of quality of service (QoS) for the macro cell users in the vicinity of small cells is provided. Both data and control channel constraints are considered, to ensure that not only the macro cell users’ data rate demands are met, but also a certain level of Bit Error Rate (BER) is ensured for the control channel information. Control channel reliability is especially important as it holds key information to successfully decode the data channel. The problem is addressed by our proposed linear binary integer programming heuristic algorithm which maximises the small cells utility while ensuring the macro users imposed constraints. To further reduce the computational complexity, we propose a progressive interference aware low complexity heuristic solution. Discussion is also presented for the implementation possibility of our proposed algorithms in a practical network. The performance of both the proposed algorithms is compared with the conventional Reuse-1 scheme under different fading conditions and small cell loads. Results show a negligible drop in small cell performance for our proposed schemes, as a trade-off for ensuring all macro users data rate demands, while Reuse-1 scheme can even lead up to 40 % outage when control region of the small cells in heavily loaded

Energy efficiency in heterogeneous wireless access networks

In this article, we bring forward the important aspect of energy savings in wireless access networks. We specifically focus on the energy saving opportunities in the recently evolving heterogeneous networks (HetNets), both Single- RAT and Multi-RAT. Issues such as sleep/wakeup cycles and interference management are discussed for co-channel Single-RAT HetNets. In addition to that, a simulation based study for LTE macro-femto HetNets is presented, indicating the need for dynamic energy efficient resource management schemes. Multi-RAT HetNets also come with challenges such as network integration, combined resource management and network selection. Along with a discussion on these challenges, we also investigate the performance of the conventional WLAN-first network selection mechanism in terms of energy efficiency (EE) and suggest that EE can be improved by the application of intelligent call admission control policies

Effect of Employer Branding Attributes on Talent Retention with Mediating Role of Transformational Leadership

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine, the relationship between employer branding attributes and transformational leadership on talent retention in telecom sector of Pakistan. This study involves the data collected from questionnaire. The respondent were employees and employers of telecom industry of Pakistan. Our sample size comprise of 250 employees includes both male, female of different age group out of which data from 181 respondents were entered into Statistical Package for the Social Sciences SPSS-19. Data are analyzed by means of descriptive statistics, bivariate correlations and regression through SPSS-19 and Smart PLS. Our findings indicate that employer branding attributes like reward strategy, people orientedness, and perceived organizational support are positivity relation with talent retention whereas the training and development is not showing significant relation with talent retentions. Mediating effect of transformational leadership is proved

Theoretical and Experimental Study of Hydrodynamic Pair Interactions in Sheet Flow

Department of PhysicsHydrodynamic interaction between two particles is symmetric at a low Reynolds number uniform flow, creating a hydrodynamic pair. When this pair is sufficiently far from other particles/pairs in the flow it moves with a constant velocity depending on pair length and tilt. In a high concentration of particles, this symmetry is frequently broken due to the presence of other nearby particles, leading to rapid formation/breaking of pairs and high-frequency disturbances in their velocities. Our results show that pair formation dominates the hydrodynamic interaction and controls the spreading of particles both in parallel and perpendicular directions to the background flow. In a continuous medium, pair formation leads to disturbances that propagate as a function of the mean speed of particles. We also study the pair formation dynamics in the regular periodic arrangement of particles in the one-dimensional chain and the two-dimensional square, and triangular geometries with periodic boundary conditions. In the disordered phase, measurements show a sub-population of long-lived particle pairs. Modeling and simulation of the ordered crystalline phase identify the pairs as effective quasiparticles, emerging at the Dirac cones of the spectrum and inducing the melting of the crystal. When the intrinsic threefold symmetry of the hydrodynamic interaction matches that of the crystal, the cones connect to a multicritical, monkey-saddle van Hove singularity, forming a flat band of slow low-frequency excitations whose divergent density drives a sharper melting transition. We compute structure factor, radial distribution, autocorrelation function, and power spectrum evolution in time for these arrangements and compared these with the experiment in which particles flow in microfluidic channels.ope

Islamic VS Conventional Commercial Banking: The Resilience Avant-Garde

This paper aims to examine the differences in financial resilience of Islamic and Conventional Commercial banks with respect to the short term and long-term perspectives to pliability. The selected banks are compared on their resilience quotient exhibited by Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) and Z-Scores. This study evaluates cross country panel data of 157 listed and non-listed licensed Islamic banks located in 22 countries and same number of their conventional commercial counterparts, through a period of 1998 to 2018. The data were collected through BANKSCOPE database and World Bank publications. Ratio analysis and Multiple Regression analysis were applied on data to analyze the extent of resilience of both Islamic and Conventional banks.The findings suggest that there are considerable differences in short term and long term resilience quotient of Islamic and Conventional commercial banks. Where Islamic banks have relatively enervated position than Commercial banks on liquidity frontier, they hold a more resilient position with respect to z-score. ROE and Capital adequacy are two important factors that have a significant impact on bank resilience.This research is different from all past researches with respect to methodological, aeon and acclimatization perspective. Resilience is a relatively new phenomenon adopted from complex adaptive ecosystems and most studies in this area are of theoretical nature. Moreover, the fact that this research has considered not only the long term but also short-term resilience perspective, adds to its overall value and originality

Autonomy of Higher Education Institutions in Pakistan: A Case Study of University of Education, Lahore

The study encompasses the concept of university autonomy in the context of higher education reforms of Pakistan in 2002. It uses case study research methodology and explores two core dimensions of university autonomy namely administrative autonomy and financial autonomy. The study aims to describe the nature and extent of administrative and financial autonomy at University of Education, Lahore. The data collected is of qualitative in nature and is collected mainly through observations, in-depth semi-structured interviews and analyses of the available documents. The research employs amalgamation of judgment and snowball sampling techniques. The respondents included members of administrative staff and the senior faculty of the university. The conclusions drawn from analysis of data tell that university enjoys sufficient amount of administrative autonomy as it can set its future direction, appoint faculty and staff to meet its present and future needs of human resources and can award or revoke affiliations to various educational institutions for the purpose of awarding degrees, but has low levels of financial autonomy as it is heavily dependent on government funding for its recurring/non-developmental and developmental expenditures. Key Words: administrative autonomy, financial autonomy, nature of autonomy, extent of autonomy, higher education reforms

Towards Efficient, Work-Conserving, and Fair Bandwidth Guarantee in Cloud Datacenters

Bandwidth guarantee is a critical feature to enable performance predictability in cloud datacenters. This process is expected to achieve three requirements: work conservation, fairness, and simplicity. However, the distributed nature of datacenters raises significant challenges to attaining those requirements at the same time. In this paper, we propose an efficient approach that can satisfy the three requirements simultaneously. Our scheme takes advantage of multipath TCP (MPTCP) to generate explicit bandwidth guarantee (BG) traffic and work conservation (WC) traffic.We further prioritize the BG traffic over the WC traffic in the network fabric. Due to the priority setting, WC cannot harm bandwidth guarantees and thus is effectively supported. We show that the MPTCP fits this direction well but presents some new issues when the WC subfows own a low priority. We thus adapt the MPTCP to handle these issues through a customized scheduler (which strictly prioritizes BG subfow during packet scheduling) and adopting a large receive buffer. In addition, we enable tenants to share unused bandwidth fairly by managing the overall aggressiveness of the WC traffic. The proposed system can be easily implemented with commercial off-the-shelf servers and switches.We have implemented with the Linux kernel MPTCP for experiments. The extensive experiments in a small cluster (including one MapReduce experiment) and trace-driven simulations show that our scheme achieves the design goals effectively