A local search heuristic for the design problem of 3G UMTS All-IP release 4 networks with realistic traffic

In this paper, we focus on the development of an efficient heuristic in order to solve the planning problem of 3rd Generation (3G) Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) all-IP Release 4 networks. We also incorporate a realistic traffic profile taken from real live networks. Since the problem is NP-hard, an approximate algorithm based on the local search principles is proposed. Numerical results demonstrate that the local search algorithm produces solutions that are, on average, within 5.03% of the optimal solution, and in the best and worst cases at 0.87% and 9.29% of the optimal solution respectively.