Cellular Network Design Site Selection and Frequency Planning

Deployment of cellular networks involves substantial capital investment. Competition motivates service providers to minimize these costs while maintaining service quality. We develop a cost-minimizing planning model that simultaneously determines three important variables – base station location, power level and frequency group assignments for the antennas at each selected base station. It can represent different antenna configurations and frequency groups commonly used in practice. The integer-programming problem is solved using a Lagrangian relaxation based heuristic and computational tests indicate good solution quality for reasonably large problems. We also note the appropriate role of such optimization models in the overall planning process.