After two well received events at VTC in Budapest 2011 and at ISWCS in Paris 2012, the 3rd IWSON is hosted by VTC 2013 Spring in Dresden. Accepted papers are considered as VTC papers and will appear in IEEExplore. Do consult the workshop web page http://www.ieeevtc.org/vtc2013spring/workshops.php#SON or http://tns.ds.unipi.gr/iwson2013/ for most recent information and submission instructions, as well as considering joining the group IWSON at LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/groups/IWSON-3453388?home=&gid=3453388&trk=anet_ug_hm&goback=.myg.

/The organizing committee

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the Self-Organizing Network (SON) paradigm applied to wireless communications networks. Approaching the challenges in radio network SON is a focus area in both industry and academia research. Currently, we note rising interest in field experience from early LTE SON deployments, SON coordination approaches and techniques, SON features tailored to the needs of multi-radio access technology and multi-layer networks (heterogeneous network, HetNet), SON in multi-vendor networks, and SON for future radio access technologies beyond LTE and LTE-Advanced. With the success of the first two IWSON events in Budapest and Paris and the progressive focus on SON as the means to improve the performance and operability of mobile radio networks, it is timely and important to continue this workshop series bringing together people with SON interests. The scope of IWSON is intended to attract both industry and academia, primarily with a focus on 3GPP technologies such as LTE, but other systems can be considered as well. The program will include at least one plenary presentation, oral presentations and a poster & demonstration session to enable lively discussions. The workshop welcomes submissions from both researchers and practitioners, either closely related to currently standardized systems or considering future systems. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

SON in macro cells and HetNets
• Broad view of HetNet (beyond 3GPP): multi-layer, - vendor, -technology (incl. WiFi)
• Load balancing, traffic steering; interference management
• Energy Saving Management (ESM) in HetNets
• MDT as boosting data source for macro and HetNet SON
• RAN / network / user equipment support for SON
• SON for vehicular applications
• Macro cell SON innovations

SON management and coordination
• SON workflow definition and management
• SON policies definition, deployment and management
• Coordination between network layers, vendors, technologies, RAN and backhaul
• Different coordination approaches, e.g., design vs. runtime, distributed vs. centralized, layered vs. monolithic, implicit vs. explicit, etc.

SON in the field
• Test bed activities and experience from field trials
• Experiences and field performance of SON features implemented in LTE deployments

SON evolution
• Automation techniques and technologies beyond SON
• Cognitive and self-learning mechanisms
• Scenario and application-specific SON, e.g., smart cities, telematics applications, disaster handling, car-to-machine communications