ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to bridge the gap between expert systems and telecommunications domains, and to make artificial intelligence techniques commonly accessible tools to accomplish some of important telecommunications tasks. It deals with some background information on telecommunications management and the application history of expert systems in this field. The chapter aims to characterize telecommunications domains and corresponding tasks, and describes common artificial intelligence techniques. It draws some lessons and outlines future research and development directions. A telecommunications network is a complex aggregate of switches and a transmission medium, which together provide a multiplicity of channels over which many customers’ messages and associated control signals can be transmitted. Artificial Intelligence technology is filling an essential need in telecommunications management tasks as networks grow in size, complexity, and importance. In the future, intelligent networks will self-diagnose, engage in distributed cooperative problem-solving, and perform proactive network management.
