In old days, 2G and 3G Cellular systems configurations were based on information from planning tools and drive tests. With the development of 4G LTE, the Service Providers put the requirements for management simplicity and cost efficiency. This put a great focus for creating solutions for Self-Organizing Networks (SON). One of the first SON solutions introduced in the standards was the Automatic Neighbor Relation (ANR), to automatically generate neighbor relations between Base Station Cells. These relations are used to establish connections Base Station Cells to support mobility, load balancing, dual connectivity, etc.
With 4G deployments, we have seen ANR significantly reduced the planning and operation costs for operators. Therefore, 3GPP considered automatic establishment of neighbor relations also very important in 5G NR . In this blog post we will discuss the basics of ANR with respect to 5G NR.
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