Efficient Wireless access network design based on improved heuristic optimization algorithms

This paper presents two novel heuristic algorithms for the design of wireless access networks. Emphasis was given to the design of CDMA based wireless networks and Fixed Wireless networks. The objectives of these methods are first to place a number of access points/base stations in a number of candidate sites and then to assign a number of fixed wireless terminals to the selected access points/base stations. Both methods are based on Graph Theory and they are essentially greedy algorithms. Except from capacity constraints, wireless reception characteristics are also considered. The algorithms are capable of designing medium and largescale networks at polynomial time. Both algorithms were compared with an analogous optimisation problem through a series of tests. The results indicate that as regards design costs the performance of the heuristics is very close to this of the equivalent optimisation problem. The solution times for the heuristics are smaller especially when the number of the candidate access points/base stations becomes large.