An active contour based algorithm for cell planning

Cell planning is a crucial part of designing a mobile communication network. Although, there are many proposed algorithms for this purpose, the problem has been remained challenging in non-uniform traffic situations. In this paper, we propose a new cell planning method based on active contour theory. The structure of the proposed method lets several parameters be applied in cellular mobile communication network design simultaneously. Some of these parameters are the coverage area of each base station, the overlap between neighbor base transceiver stations and the location of each base station in the test areas. The proposed technique is noticeably fast and accurate comparing with other competing methods. In addition, the dimension of areas can be much larger than the test areas in other schemes. The novelty of this paper is to utilize active contour theory for solving complex geometry and traffic areas. In our method, each active contour represents a base station coverage area. An iterative optimization algorithm is proposed to optimize the parameters of the set of active contours. The optimization criteria include the maximum overlap coverage area as well as minimum number of cells and cell overlaps. Experimental results shows 99.92% and 97.23% overall coverage in uniform and non-uniform traffic situation respectively, revealing a great improvement with respect to genetic algorithm.