In this paper the concept of self-organisation in wireless networks is intr
oduced. The paper proposes planning and deployment cost, capacity, coverage
, flexibility and future potential as the criteria by which wireless topolo
gies and resource management strategies should be validated. It discusses n
umerous techniques that can be considered as self-organising and evaluates
the suitability of these techniques in both macro- and microcellular enviro
nments. A standard 4-carrier GSM base station is used as the reference cell
ular technology. It is demonstrated that, by combining suitable techniques,
a potential future capacity increase of one order of magnitude (13 times)
is estimated in a microcellular environment. Substantial capacity increment
s can also be achieved in macrocellular networks. When the cost of both pla
nning and deployment is considered, intelligent relaying together with envi
ronment adaptation are shown to perform well and could reduce the cost of f
uture networks to a tenth of their current level.