Effective optimization and fault tolerance using multi-homed link assignment in cellular access network

Rapid growth of mobile usage and on demand applications not only requires huge performance enhancements of cellular network but also requires fault tolerance, cost effectiveness at its access sub network level. This paper proposes cost optimization model along with fault tolerance for cellular access network. The first objective of the problem is minimization of link cost by optimal assignment of base station to base station controller in a cellular access network, incorporating connectivity constraint and capacity constraint. The fault tolerant mechanism is that, the access network will be able to communicate even in case of any network failure. The second objective aims at fault tolerant mechanism to surmount transmission level link failure by using link redundant multi homing strategy. The mathematical mixed integer programming model has been used to formulate the problem. The fault tolerant cost optimization is a NP hard problem. Therefore simple and efficient heuristic algorithm targeting cost optimization along with fault tolerance has been proposed. The result achieves an average residual capacity of ~26% with back up link assignment. Further, load allocation during multi link failure is attained within minimum gap of 1%. The computation time almost remains same for single and multiple link failure. The algorithm performs well in both small and lager access network.