Heuristic assignment of cells to switches in mobile cellular networks

The problem of assigning of cells to switches in a cellular network is a NP-hard problem which cannot be solved in an exact way in reasonable calculating times. In this article, we propose a compromise bused on the tabu search heuristics to obtain acceptable solutions with little processing effort. The method essentially consists in modifying in an iterative way an initial solution while hoping to reach a final solution which respects the constraints of the problem. The results obtained confirm the effectiveness and the robustness of the tabu search method particularly to solve problems with a certain number of cells and switches.