Optimal assignment of cells in PCS networks

Abstract

This paper deals with the assignment problem of cells to switches in a personal communication service network. Three types of costs in a PCS network are considered in detail: the cost of handoffs, the cost of cabling, and the cost of switching. The optimal assignment problem is formulated as an integer-programming problem. A heuristic algorithm is proposed to obtain an assignment of cells in a PCS network. The proposed algorithm is compared with an existing heuristic cell assignment algorithm. By numerical examination, it is shown that the switching cost has a large effect on the solution of the cell assignment problem. The proposed algorithm obtains much better cell assignment in which the load of each switch is balanced and the total cost of a PCS network is much lower than what is obtained by the existing algorithm that does not take account of the switching cost. If the switching cost is taken into account, it has also been shown that our proposed algorithm achieves substantially the same results as the existing algorithm while requiring much less computation time.