By David Sims

Recently Alcatel-Lucent produced a Flash presentation on self-organizing networks, inter-cell interference coordination. Needless to say the graphics are punchier than what you'll find in this article, but we'll give the play by play, you can hit the original for the bells and whistles.

The entire licensed frequency band is available to all LTE cells of an operator. When the terminal enters an area of high interference, this requires that any two neighbor cells always have different frequency patterns, or colors (you'll want to check the graphics out on this one). So Step One is the initial coloring: Each cell picks a color and checks with its neighbor to see if there's a conflict.

Self-Organizing Networks, the presentation says, are standardized by the 3GPP. Alcatel-Lucent's implementation of the ICIC feature helps operators maintain outstanding quality on their LTE networks - \"with no additional OPEX,\" company officials say.

In fact, they say, Bell Labs studies show that Alcatel-Lucent's ICIC offers such benefits to the service provider as handover failure reduced fivefold, increased throughput of up to 30 percent and a performance increase in call setup.

Last year TMC's Anamika Singh reported that Alcatel-Lucent introduced a software module that enables service providers to expand the capabilities of their wireless networks through rapid introduction of Long Term Evolution technology.

The software module is a key component of the company's enhanced NodeB and supports the delivery of next-generation wireless services, company officials said at the time:

\"The LTE software module can be loaded onto the Alcatel-Lucent -9326 Digital 2U eNode B, a zero footprint baseband module deployed with Alcatel-Lucent's 3G customers,\" Singh wrote. \"This baseband module integrates into existing base station cabinets for a seamless evolution to LTE via software-only upgrade. It also provides high capacity and high throughput with improved response time for new service offerings and enables operators to add LTE capability to their existing networks.\"

Alcatel-Lucent's LTE solution complies with the latest 3GPP standards and also incorporates Self-Organizing and Self-Optimizing capabilities for introduction of services and ensure that the network is dynamically optimized.