Optimization Techniques for Solving Complex Problems

CHAPTER 17

Optimal Location of Antennas in Telecommunication Networks

G. MOLINA, F. CHICANO, and E. ALBA

Universidad de Málaga, Spain

17.1 INTRODUCTION

Mobile communications is a major area in the industry of the twenty-first century. As customers get used to having both mobility and connectivity, these types of services are required more and more. Mobile communications require the use of a mobile device by the end user, the presence of a network accessible by the mobile device from any place the user has to be, and a backbone network that manages the connections and communications between users. Also, ad hoc and sensor networks need to define a cluster responsible for communications to take place, in a dynamic and novel way of assigning data transfer functionalities to a given terminal. Recently, numerous companies have entered this area and began to compete to offer the best services at the lowest cost. Therefore, a great number of issues have arisen as problems to be solved in order to optimize the features of the service.

In this chapter we present one of the major issues found in this domain, the design of the access network, and propose a set of optimization techniques that can solve it efficiently and effectively. These techniques can be employed for static regular cellular phone networks and for dynamic networks with no infrastructure (such as ad hoc or sensor networks); ...