Decomposition technique for fixed channel assignment problems in mobile radio networks

The paper is concerned with the possibility of using a decomposition technique to solve fixed channel assignment (FCA) problems. The main idea is first to transform and then to decompose the original large FCA problem into a number of smaller-size connected integer linear programming (ILP) sub-problems. A sequential branch-and-bound algorithm is then used to solve optimally and efficiently the sub-problems. The computational results obtained when the technique is applied to a number of different benchmark problems confirm that the proposed technique is computationally efficient in solving large-scale FCA problems and that it is capable of significantly reducing the computation time involved. The technique also makes it possible in some cases to solve large-scale FCA problems