Solving frequency assignment problem using API algorithm

The efficient frequency assignment for radio communications becomes more and more crucial when developing new information technologies and their applications. It is consists in defining an assignment of frequencies to radio links, to be established between base stations and mobile transmitters. Separation of the frequencies assigned is necessary to avoid interference. However, unnecessary separation causes an excess requirement for spectrum, the cost of which may be very high. This problem is NP-hard problem which cannot be solved by conventional optimization algorithms. It is therefore necessary to use metaheuristic methods to solve it. This paper proposes API method (shortest of APIcalis) to solve this problem. It is based on a model of Pachycondyla APIcalis ants´ foraging behavior. Computational results, obtained on a number of standard problem instances, testify the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Direct comparison of our approach with simulated annealing (SA) and Tabu Search (TS) on the same set of tests shows the interest of our approach for this problem.