ENCON: an evolutionary algorithm for the antenna placement problem

The placement of antennas is an important step in the design of mobile radio networks. We introduce a model for the antenna placement problem (APP) that addresses cover, traffic demand, interference, different parameterized antenna types, and the geometrical structure of cells. The resulting optimization problem is constrained and multi-objective. We present an evolutionary algorithm, capable of dealing with more than 700 candidate sites in the working area. The results show that the APP is tractable. The automatically generated designs enable experts to focus their efforts on the difficult parts of a network design problem.