Multi-period design of survivable wireless access networks under capacity constraints

Design of survivable wireless access networks plays a key role in the overall design of a wireless network. In this research, the multi-period design of a wireless access network under capacity and survivability constraints is considered. Given the location of the cells and hubs, the cost of interconnection, and the demands generated by the cells, the goal of the designer is to find the best interconnection between cells and hubs so that the overall connection cost is minimized and the capacity and the survivability constraints are met. Integer programming formulations for this problem are proposed and the problems are solved using heuristic methods. Using different combination of network sizes, demand patterns and various time periods, a number of numerical experiments are conducted and all of them are found to yield high quality solutions. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.