Optimization of 3G Radio Network Planning Using Tabu Search

There are many factors that have to be considered during planning phase of mobile radio networks. Some of the most important factors are: quality of service (QoS), cost of implementation and provisioning, traffic coverage ratio, and resource utilization. This paper analyzes economic aspects of 3G mobile radio network deployment and presents a planning model which explicitly takes into account some important factors such as QoS and investment cost. It emphasizes the impact of planning objectives and network element cost structures on 3G radio network deployment. The planning problem can be NP-hard, which is approximately tackled by a metaheuristic optimization method – tabu search algorithm. Numerical experiments with realistic problem sizes are conducted to describe some important aspects of efficient 3G network planning and demonstrate the efficiency and the practicality of the tabu search algorithm.