INTERFERENCE IDENTIFICATION IN A RAN

1 . A method for identifying interferences in a telecommunications network having at least one serving cell and at least one reported cell, the method comprising steps of:

retrieving data sources including one or more of (a) call trace data from the telecommunications network and (b) device metrics from multiple user equipment (UEs) connected to a telecommunications network;

processing the data sources to form an interference matrix with structured data that is vendor and device agnostic by (a) parsing and correlating the call trace data to provide the structured data and (b) processing the device metrics from multiple UEs and geo-binning them based on location;

analyzing the structured data in the interference matrix to determine interferences between cells; and

displaying information about the determined interferences.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the call trace data or the device metrics include measurement data, physical information, and configuration management data.

3 . The method of claim 2 , wherein the physical information includes handover information and the configuration management data includes topology data.

4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the location is based on a reported location within the device metrics, and the geo-binning is a grouping of individual device metrics during a period of time and based on a fixed bin size.

5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the determined interferences are Physical layer Cell Identifier (PCI) clashes.

6 . The method of claim 5 , wherein the PCI clashes include at least one of:

a PCI collision between serving cell and reported cell;

a PCI confusion between any reported cell of the same serving cell;

a PCI confusion between a serving cell and any second order reported cell;

a PCI confusion between any reported cell of a specific serving cell and any other second order reported cell;

a PCI confusion between two serving cells with a common reported cell; and

a PCI collision between two cells serving two or more distinct devices located with a fixed distance from each other.

7 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the parsing and correlating or the processing includes classifying the cells by technology and by carrier.

8 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the steps further include:

retrieving at least one planning rule threshold, wherein the planning rule threshold is one of a percentage of overlapping, a minimum amount of data points, a minimum required Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) level of the reported cell, a minimum handover success rate for a neighbor cell and a maximum number of handover attempts in a measurement period.

9 . The method of claim 8 , wherein the steps further include:

identifying a cell from the telecommunications network to be a neighboring cell to another cell of the telecommunications network using the planning rule threshold and providing a neighbor addition report to the telecommunications network including information about the identified cell.

10 . The method of claim 8 , wherein the steps further include:

determining a cell from the telecommunications network to be falsely identified as a neighboring cell to another cell of the telecommunications network using metrics of the interference matrix and providing a neighbor deletion report to the telecommunications network including information about the determined cell, wherein the falsely identified cell has less measurements than the minimum expected measurements.

11 . The method of claim 10 , wherein the falsely identified cell does not meet the minimum handover success rate for a neighbor cell.

12 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the steps further include:

identifying problematic cells within the network, wherein the problematic cells are at least one of a serving cell with a high number of associated interferences, a serving cell with poor Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) difference (lack of dominance) and a reported or correlated cell which is causing unnecessary interference.

13 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the determining interferences includes identifying reported cells with a higher importance using the structured data.

14 . The method of claim 13 , wherein the identifying includes calculating a footprint overlapping metric using (a) a number of measurement reports in which a reported cell is present for a specific serving cell or (b) a number of device metrics where various cells are present within a reporting period and location bin area.

15 . The method a of claim 13 , wherein the determining interferences includes comparing magnitudes of a Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) of each reported cell and serving cell.

16 . A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions for identifying interferences in a telecommunications network having at least one serving cell and at least one reported cell, the instructions, when executed, cause one or more processors to implement steps of:

retrieving data sources including one or more of (a) call trace data from the telecommunications network and (b) device metrics from multiple user equipment (UEs) connected to a telecommunications network;

processing the data sources to form an interference matrix with structured data that is vendor and device agnostic by (a) parsing and correlating the call trace data to provide the structured data and (b) processing the device metrics from multiple UEs and geo-binning them based on location;

analyzing the structured data in the interference matrix to determine interferences between cells; and

displaying information about the determined interferences.

17 . The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 16 , wherein the steps further include:

retrieving at least one planning rule threshold, wherein the planning rule threshold is one of a percentage of overlapping, a minimum amount of data points, a minimum required Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) level of the reported cell, a minimum handover success rate for a neighbor cell and a maximum number of handover attempts in a measurement period.

18 . The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 16 , wherein the steps further include:

identifying problematic cells within the network, wherein the problematic cells are at least one of a serving cell with a high number of associated interferences, a serving cell with poor Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) difference (lack of dominance) and a reported or correlated cell which is causing unnecessary interference.

19 . An apparatus comprising:

one or more processors; and

memory storing instructions for identifying interferences in a telecommunications network having at least one serving cell and at least one reported cell, the instructions, when executed cause the one or more processors to:

retrieve data sources including one or more of (a) call trace data from the telecommunications network and (b) device metrics from multiple user equipment (UEs) connected to a telecommunications network;

process the data sources to form an interference matrix with structured data that is vendor and device agnostic by (a) parsing and correlating the call trace data to provide the structured data and (b) processing the device metrics from multiple UEs and geo-binning them based on location;

analyze the structured data in the interference matrix to determine interferences between cells; and

cause a display of information about the determined interferences.

20 . The apparatus of claim 19 , wherein the instructions, when executed cause the one or more processors to:

retrieve at least one planning rule threshold, wherein the planning rule threshold is one of a percentage of overlapping, a minimum amount of data points, a minimum required Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) level of the reported cell, a minimum handover success rate for a neighbor cell and a maximum number of handover attempts in a measurement period.