TY - GEN A1 - Eisenblätter, Andreas A1 - Grötschel, Martin A1 - Koster, Arie M.C.A. T1 - Frequency Planning and Ramifications of Coloring N2 - This paper surveys frequency assignment problems coming up in planning wireless communication services. It particularly focuses on cellular mobile phone systems such as GSM, a technology that revolutionizes communication. Traditional vertex coloring provides a conceptual framework for the mathematical modeling of many frequency planning problems. This basic form, however, needs various extensions to cover technical and organizational side constraints. Among these ramifications are $T$-coloring and list coloring. To model all the subtleties, the techniques of integer programming have proven to be very useful. The ability to produce good frequency plans in practice is essential for the quality of mobile phone networks. The present algorithmic solution methods employ variants of some of the traditional coloring heuristics as well as more sophisticated machinery from mathematical programming. This paper will also address this issue. Finally, this paper discusses several practical frequency assignment problems in detail, states the associated mathematical models, and also points to public electronic libraries of frequency assignment problems from practice. The associated graphs have up to several thousand nodes and range from rather sparse to almost complete. T3 - ZIB-Report - 00-47 KW - frequency assignment KW - graph coloring Y1 - 2000 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-6152 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Eisenblätter, Andreas A1 - Grötschel, Martin A1 - Martin, Alexander T1 - The Orientation Model for Frequency Assignment Problems N2 - Mobile telecommunication systems establish a large number of communication links with a limited number of available frequencies; reuse of the same or adjacent frequencies on neighboring links causes interference. The task to find an assignment of frequencies to channels with minimal interference is the frequency assignment problem. The frequency assignment problem is usually treated as a graph coloring problem where the number of colors is minimized, but this approach does not model interference minimization correctly. We give in this paper a new integer programming formulation of the frequency assignment problem, the orientation model, and develop a heuristic two-stage method to solve it. The algorithm iteratively solves an outer and an inner optimization problem. The outer problem decides for each pair of communication links which link gets the higher frequency and leads to an acyclic subdigraph problem with additional longest path restrictions. The inner problem to find an optimal assignment respecting an orientation leads to a min-cost flow problem. T3 - ZIB-Report - TR-98-01 KW - Minimum-Cost Flow Problems KW - Cellular Radio Telephone Systems KW - Frequency Assignment Problem KW - Integer Programming Y1 - 1998 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-5627 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Eisenblätter, Andreas A1 - Grötschel, Martin A1 - Koster, Arie M.C.A. T1 - Frequenzplanung im Mobilfunk N2 - Telekommunikation ist seit Jahren \glqq in\grqq. Zunächst gab es einen enormen Aufschwung; neue Technologien und Dienste haben eine überwältigende, nicht vorhersehbare Akzeptanz gefunden. Derzeit ist -- ausgelöst durch die UMTS-Lizenzversteigerungen, Rezessions- und Sättigungstendenzen -- eine Krise zu verzeichnen. Viele (auch wir) sind davon überzeugt, dass technischer Fortschritt und nützliche Dienste demnächst die Stimmung wieder ändern werden. Wenigen ist allerdings bewusst, welche Rolle Mathematik bei der Entwicklung und dem effizienten Einsatz vieler der neuen Kommunikationstechnologien spielt. In diesem Artikel soll kein Überblick über diesen umfangreichen Themenkreis gegeben werden. Wir zeigen lediglich an einem konkreten Beispiel aus dem Mobilfunk, der Frequenzplanung in GSM-Funknetzen, was man durch geeignete Modellierung der praktischen Fragestellung und den Einsatz problemadäquater Algorithmen erreichen kann. T3 - ZIB-Report - 02-09 KW - Telekommunikation KW - Frequenzplanung KW - Mobilfunk KW - GSM-Funknetze Y1 - 2002 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-6762 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Eisenblätter, Andreas A1 - Fügenschuh, Armin A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Koster, Arie M.C.A. A1 - Martin, Alexander A1 - Pfender, Tobias A1 - Wegel, Oliver A1 - Wessäly, Roland T1 - Modelling Feasible Network Configurations for UMTS N2 - A model for the optimisation of the location and configuration of base stations in a UMTS network is described. The focus is primarily on modelling the configuration problem sufficiently accurate using mixed-integer variables and (essentially) linear constraints. These constraints reflect the limited downlink code capacity in each cell, the interference limitations for successful up- and downlink transmissions, the need for sufficiently strong (cell) pilot signals, and the potential gain for mobiles from being in soft(er) hand-over. It is also explained how to use the model as a basis for rating network configurations. T3 - ZIB-Report - 02-16 KW - UMTS KW - radio interface KW - network planning KW - configuration KW - perfect power control KW - mathematical model KW - mixed integer programming KW - MOMENTUM KW - IST-20 Y1 - 2002 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-6837 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Eisenblätter, Andreas A1 - Koster, Arie M.C.A. A1 - Wallbaum, Randolf A1 - Wessäly, Roland T1 - Load Balancing in Signaling Transfer Points N2 - Signaling is crucial to the operation of modern telecommunication networks. A breakdown in the signaling infrastructure typically causes customer service failures, incurs revenue losses, and hampers the company image. Therefore, the signaling network has to be highest reliability and survivability. This in particular holds for the routers in such a network, called \textit{signaling transfer points\/} (STPs). The robustness of an STP can be improved by equally distributing the load over the internal processing units. Several constraints have to be taken into account. The load of the links connected to a processing unit changes over time introducing an imbalance of the load. In this paper, we show how integer linear programming can be applied to reduce the imbalance within an STP, while keeping the number of changes small. Two alternative models are presented. Computational experiments validate the integer programming approach in practice. The GSM network operator E-Plus saves substantial amounts of time and money by employing the proposed approach. T3 - ZIB-Report - 02-50 KW - Signaling network KW - STP KW - load-balancing KW - integer programming KW - computations Y1 - 2002 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-7179 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Eisenblätter, Andreas A1 - Geerdes, Hans-Florian A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Türke, Ulrich T1 - MOMENTUM Data Scenarios for Radio Network Planning and Simulation (Extended Abstract) N2 - We present publicly available data sets related to research on wireless networks. The scenarios contain a wide range of data and are detailed in all aspects. To our knowledge, this is the most realistic, comprehensive, and detailed \emph{public} data collection on mobile networking. We indicate example uses of this data collection in applications related tu UMTS. T3 - ZIB-Report - 04-07 KW - Radio Network Planning KW - Simulation KW - UMTS KW - Realistic Data KW - XML Y1 - 2004 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-7829 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Eisenblätter, Andreas A1 - Geerdes, Hans-Florian A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Martin, Alexander A1 - Wessäly, Roland T1 - UMTS Radio Network Evaluation and Optimization beyond Snapshots N2 - This paper is concerned with UMTS radio network design. Our task is to reconfigure antennas and the related cells as to improve network quality. In contrast to second generation GSM networks, \emph{interference} plays a paramount role when designing third generation radio networks. A known compact formulation for assessing the interference characteristics of a radio network as coupling relations between cells based on user snapshots is generalized to statistical average load. This enables us to overcome the notorious difficulties of snapshot-based network optimization approaches. We recall a mixed-integer programming model for the network design problem that is based on user snapshots and contrast it with a new network design model based on the average coupling formulation. Exemplarily focusing on the important problem of optimizing antenna tilts, we give computational results for a fast local search algorithm and the application of a MIP solver to both models. These results demonstrate that our new average-based approaches outperform state-of-the-art snapshot models for UMTS radio network optimization. T3 - ZIB-Report - 04-15 KW - UMTS KW - Network planning KW - Network design KW - Optimization Y1 - 2004 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-7903 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Eisenblätter, Andreas A1 - Fügenschuh, Armin A1 - Geerdes, Hans-Florian A1 - Junglas, Daniel A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Martin, Alexander T1 - Optimization Methods for UMTS Radio Network Planning N2 - The UMTS radio network planning problem poses the challenge of designing a cost-effective network that provides users with sufficient coverage and capacity. We describe an optimization model for this problem that is based on comprehensive planning data of the EU project MOMENTUM. We present heuristic mathematical methods for this realistic model, including computational results. T3 - ZIB-Report - 03-41 Y1 - 2003 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-7637 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Geerdes, Hans-Florian A1 - Eisenblätter, Andreas T1 - Reconciling Theory and Practice: A Revised Pole Equation for W-CDMA Cell Powers N2 - The performance evaluation of W-CDMA networks is intricate as cells are strongly coupled through interference. Pole equations have been developed as a simple tool to analyze cell capacity. Numerous scientific contributions have been made on their basis. In the established forms, the pole equations rely on strong assumptions such as homogeneous traffic, uniform users, and constant downlink orthogonality factor. These assumptions are not met in realistic scenarios. Hence, the pole equations are typically used during initial network dimensioning only. Actual network (fine-) planning requires a more faithful analysis of each individual cell's capacity. Complex analytical analysis or Monte-Carlo simulations are used for this purposes. In this paper, we generalize the pole equations to include inhomogeneous data. We show how the equations can be parametrized in a cell-specific way provided the transmit powers are known. This allows to carry over prior results to realistic settings. This is illustrated with an example: Based on the pole equation, we investigate the accuracy of average snapshot'' approximations for downlink transmit powers used in state-of-the-art network optimization schemes. We confirm that the analytical insights apply to practice-relevant settings on the basis of results from detailed Monte-Carlo simulation on realistic datasets. T3 - ZIB-Report - 07-11 Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-9543 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Eisenblätter, Andreas A1 - Grötschel, Martin A1 - Martin, Alexander T1 - Frequency Assignment in Cellular Phone Networks N2 - We present a graph-theoretic model for the \emph{frequency assignment problem} in Cellular Phone Networks: Obeying several technical and legal restrictions, frequencies have to be assigned to transceivers so that interference is as small as possible. This optimization problem is NP-hard. Good approximation cannot be guaranteed, unless P = NP. We describe several assignment heuristics. These heuristics are simple and not too hard to implement. We give an assessment of the heuristics' efficiency and practical usefulness. For this purpose, typical instances of frequency assignment problems with up to 4240 transceivers and 75 frequencies of a German cellular phone network operator are used. The results are satisfying from a practitioner's point of view. The best performing heuristics were integrated into a network planning system used in practice. T3 - ZIB-Report - SC-97-35 Y1 - 1997 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-3044 ER -