Title: A mixed-integer programming model of registration signalling and paging in a mobile communication network

Authors: Payam Khazaelpour; Ahmad Sobhani; Afshan Roshani

Addresses: Department of Industrial Systems Engineering and Product Design, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium ' School of Business Administration, Oakland University, Michigan, USA ' Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Oakland University, Michigan, USA

Abstract: Handling traffic delays in a mobile communication network (MCN) is a principal problem due to time and cost expenses. Delays limit mobile coverage. Therefore, optimisation techniques and tools are applied to minimise delays. However, there is still a high chance that at some points the network will lose its integral connectivity and delays happen. Delays prohibit call transmissions and produce several breaks. System breaks/delays cause call pending for a connection. Accordingly, network partitioning happens, thus leads to disconnection. This paper proposes a mixed-integer programming (MIP) to minimise network delays while a reliable trade-off between registration signalling (RS) and paging (P) coverage distances is maintained. The proposed MIP is NP-hard. For this reason, a metaheuristic approach, genetic algorithm (GA), is developed and compared with it. MIP validation is endorsed by GA approximations in different random trials and comparative analysis investigates GA performance metrics in a numerical example.

Keywords: genetic algorithm; mixed-integer programming; MIP; integrated mobile network optimisation; IMNO; registration signalling; paging; relaxed mixed-integer programming; RMIP; linear programming; mobile switching service centre; MSSC.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCNDS.2021.115570

International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, 2021 Vol.26 No.4, pp.367 - 397

Received: 17 Mar 2020
Accepted: 08 Jun 2020
Published online: 10 Jun 2021 *

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