A multilevel algorithm for the network design problem

This paper presents a level-based algorithm to deal with the network design problem. The proposed algorithm performs the design of the different network levels simultaneously, in the sense that the information from an ascending level can be used to optimize the solution obtained for a previous level. The experimental results have shown a significant cost reduction of 13.16% when the proposed algorithm is compared to a conventional approach in which the network levels are processed in separate. In addition, the time consumed for an engineer to design the network used in the experiment was reduced.