Espoo, Finland – Nokia today announced that KDDI has deployed its Performance Degradation Detection and Resolution (PDDR) solution nationwide to improve network quality and to reduce OPEX. Expanding on the companies’ longstanding relationship, KDDI has rolled out Nokia’s best-in-class AI-based PDDR solution to monitor 200K 4G/5G RAN around the clock and detect performance degradations. If PDDR detects “Silent cell” issue and/or an issue that should be recovered, KDDI Recovery System automatically tries to recover it.

“Silent cell” is a performance degradation issue which does not report any alarm, and it is extremely difficult to detect by traditional rule-based algorithm. Silent cell issues don’t immediately affect service quality, but will eventually impact end user experience quality making it an ongoing issue for mobile operators around the world.

Nokia AVA PDDR is an AI solution that automatically detects such anomaly performance degradation and classifies the root cause (RCC). Nokia AVA PDDR achieves higher RCC accuracy than RF expert and generates the RCC AI model, including silent cell issue, by using training data based on the knowledge acquired through KDDI and Nokia RF expert.

In the case of a Silent cell issue, KDDI Recovery System automatically tries to recover it. Leveraging closed-loop AI, Nokia AVA PDDR updates the training data automatically by using recovered cell information to allow for improved anomaly detection and resolution accuracy.

KDDI rolled out the AI solution system, Nokia AVA PDDR, across its 4G network in 2019 and 5G NSA network in 2021. Since then, KDDI has established an advanced automatic monitoring and recovery system, powered by AI. KDDI now plans to expand it to 5G NSA.

Toshikazu Yokai, Managing Executive Officer, KDDI, said: “We believe that the deployment of PDDR solution has enabled us to automatically detect quality degradation of base stations in order to provide higher quality mobile communication services. And we are also pleased to have further deepened our relationship with Nokia through this project.”

John Lancaster-Lennox, Head of Market Unit Japan, Nokia, said: “With the Nokia AVA PDDR solution, KDDI is able to automate the detection and resolution of network anomalies and sleeping cells to improve network quality. We are proud of the trust instilled in us by KDDI to test and ultimately deploy our PDDR solution nationwide.”