A hybrid channel assignment approach using an efficient evolutionary strategy in wireless mobile networks

In wireless mobile communication systems, radio spectrum is a limited resource. However, efficient use of available channels has been shown to improve the system capacity. The role of a channel assignment scheme is to allocate channels to cells or mobiles in such a way as to minimize call blocking or call dropping probabilities, and also to maximize the quality of service. Channel assignment is known to be an NP-hard optimization problem. In this paper, we have developed an evolutionary strategy (ES) which optimizes the channel assignment. The proposed ES approach uses an efficient problem representation as well as an appropriate fitness function. Our paper deals with a novel hybrid channel assignment based scheme called D-ring. Our D-ring method yields a faster running time and simpler objective function. We also propose a novel way of generating the initial population which reduces the number of channels reassignments and therefore yields a faster running time and may generate a possibly better initial parent. We have obtained better results (as well as faster running time) than a similar approach in literature.