Telecommunications Network Planning and Maintenance

Telecommunications network operators are on a constant challenge to provide new services which require ubiquitous broadband access. In an attempt to do so, they are faced with many problems such as the network coverage or providing the guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS). Network planning is a multi-objective optimization problem which involves clustering the area of interest by minimizing a cost function which includes relevant parameters, such as installation cost, distance between user and base station, supported traffic, quality of received signal, etc. On the other hand, service assurance deals with the disorders that occur in hardware or software of the managed network. This paper presents a large number of multicriteria techniques that have been developed to deal with different kinds of problems regarding network planning and service assurance. The state of the art presented will help the reader to develop a broader understanding of the problems in the domain

Optimisation of connections to a fibre network

Stronger competition together with the development of new technologies have forced the Telecom Service Providers (TSP's) in the Netherlands to look for sophisticated optimisation methods to reduce the costs of their communication services especially for new areas such as the application of fibre technology.Fibre is being considered as the transmission medium of the future because fibre deadens the signals much less than the traditional media such as copper and coax, a lot of data can be transmitted at the same time and there are only a few failures. Another advantage is that fibre cables are thin and light so that they can be put into the ground rather easily.This article describes optimisation models with the objective to minimise the costs of constructing and managing a fibre network.The optimisation models have been developed to support decisions about the design and use of a fibre network and are based on the practical situation at Enertel being one of the new TSP’s. For Enertel a national backbone was already realised. The main problem to be solved concerned the optimisation of the access to the fibre network.

Planning a Ring-Tree Network to provide Telecommunication Services at Centres of Rural Population

Nowadays certain centres of rural population are experimenting difficulties to access high-speed telecommunication networks. This phenomenon avoids the possibility of accessing to the digital revolution for such areas. The private companies are focusing their invest ment efforts in other more profitable areas. In such conditions, the governments have to promote alternatives to bridge the digital divide between rural and urban areas. We present how ring-tree topologies can be used as an adequate architecture to incorporate such less favoured areas in the Information Society. We present a case study for Andalucia (a wide region in the south of Spain) where a decision support system based on a genetic algorithm is implemented providing cost effective solutions. We make use of real life data from the telecommunication industry and present different solutions separated by coverage as well as a sensitivity analysis based on the main factors of the cost function.Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIC2003 -04784-C02-0

Andalucía assesses the investment needed to deploy a fiber-optic network

The setup of fiber-optic telecommunication networks involves high investment efforts. The Regional Government of Andalusia assigned us the development of a tool capable of evaluating the deployment cost of a network that was not to be limited only to connecting large cities, but also to include smaller towns, in order to prevent them from staying behind the progress of the Information Society. The Andalusian regional Government aimed to deploy a network capable of accessing most of the municipalities in the region, even those municipalities that could not be profitable from a monetary perspective. We developed a nonlinear mathematical programming model with special focus on the investment costs. The costs included the parts corresponding to the civil-engineering works, as well as those related to the telematic link deployment. The solution of such a complex problem was found by a genetic algorithm, which was previously tested with a set of trial problems. The results were used to persuade private companies to expand their fiber-optic networks to reach small towns

Optimisation of connections to a fibre network

Stronger competition together with the development of new technologies have forced the Telecom Service Providers (TSP's) in the Netherlands to look for sophisticated optimisation methods to reduce the costs of their communication services especially for new areas such as the application of fibre technology. Fibre is being considered as the transmission medium of the future because fibre deadens the signals much less than the traditional media such as copper and coax, a lot of data can be transmitted at the same time and there are only a few failures. Another advantage is that fibre cables are thin and light so that they can be put into the ground rather easily. This article describes optimisation models with the objective to minimise the costs of constructing and managing a fibre network. The optimisation models have been developed to support decisions about the design and use of a fibre network and are based on the practical situation at Enertel being one of the new TSP’s. For Enertel a national backbone was already realised. The main problem to be solved concerned the optimisation of the access to the fibre network

Energy management in communication networks: a journey through modelling and optimization glasses

The widespread proliferation of Internet and wireless applications has produced a significant increase of ICT energy footprint. As a response, in the last five years, significant efforts have been undertaken to include energy-awareness into network management. Several green networking frameworks have been proposed by carefully managing the network routing and the power state of network devices. Even though approaches proposed differ based on network technologies and sleep modes of nodes and interfaces, they all aim at tailoring the active network resources to the varying traffic needs in order to minimize energy consumption. From a modeling point of view, this has several commonalities with classical network design and routing problems, even if with different objectives and in a dynamic context. With most researchers focused on addressing the complex and crucial technological aspects of green networking schemes, there has been so far little attention on understanding the modeling similarities and differences of proposed solutions. This paper fills the gap surveying the literature with optimization modeling glasses, following a tutorial approach that guides through the different components of the models with a unified symbolism. A detailed classification of the previous work based on the modeling issues included is also proposed