Optimal radioport placement in cellular networks

The trend in cellular networks is toward smaller cell sizes in order to achieve a larger capacity and to reduce the transmit power of wireless handsets. This increases the number of radioports and therefore it increases the infra-structure cost of the network. Optimal placement of radioports can yield significant savings. This paper proposes two algorithms for placement of radioports in order to minimize the maximum path loss experienced by wireless handsets. The first algorithm is a local heuristic search method based on the Sebestyen (1966) algorithm. The second is a hybrid of the genetic and K-means algorithms. Simulation results show that for small floor plans there is placement error in all Sebestyen solutions. However, most solutions produced by the hybrid algorithm are global optimums and the algorithm is two orders of magnitude more efficient than an exhaustive search.