Channel Assignment Optimisation Using an Adaptive Heuristic

The rapid development of mobile communications has caused a higher demand of radio channel or carrier frequency due to additional mobile subscribers. With a limited frequency bandwidth allocated to mobile operators, good network planning is important to avoid congestion in the network. Some of the methods used to improve congestion in mobile networks is cell splitting and frequency reuse, but without good planning, such as assignment of frequencies to base station and coverage area, it will result in extra costs to mobile operators due to additional base stations being required. Two base stations, operating in the same carrier frequency, will interfere with each other subject to distance, transmission power and position of the antenna. The task of assignment carrier frequency to a base station with limited frequency resources is called the channel assignment problem (CAP) or the frequency assignment problem (FAP).The channel assignment problem can be defined as the assignment of radio channels to a base station in order to meet traffic demand without violating any interference constraints. In this paper, we will introduce a hyperheuristic approach to tackle this problem.