Application of mathematical programming to the fixed channel assignment problem in mobile radio networks

The fixed channel assignment problem (CAP) is formulated as an integer linear programming problem with compatibility and requirement constraints. The proposed formulation is general and has been extended for the case of maximum packing fixed channel assignment problems. For the solution of the resulting formulation a special branch and bound algorithm has been used. The exploitation of the problem's special structure can improve the computational efficiency of the algorithm used. The model has been applied to a number of different benchmark problems that have appeared in the literature. The examples presented show that using the proposed formulation and a specially designed branch and bound algorithm, it is possible to solve optimally and efficiently fairly large channel assignment problems.