Solving the Generalized Base Station Placement problem in the planning of Broadband Power Line Communications access networks

Broadband power line communications (B-PLC) technology is an alternative for broadband access networks, allowing bit rates up to currently 200 Mbps. This technique uses the wiring of the low-voltage grid in order to offer to the users the telecommunications services, such as Internet. In this paper, the B-PLC planning process is sub-divided into two parts, which are the generalized base station placement (GBSP) and the PLC channel allocation problem (P-CAP). This paper focuses on GBSP that is formulated as multi-objective combinatorial optimization and solved by the means of metaheuristics. Two optimization approaches are used to solve it: the classical approach based on single-objective optimization and the modern approach based on multi-objective optimization. Their performances are evaluated and compared with each other.