A Useful Metaheuristic for Dynamic Channel Assignment in Mobile Cellular Systems

The prime objective of a Channel Assignment Problem (CAP) is to assign appropriate number of required channels to each cell in a way to achieve both efficient frequency spectrum utilization and minimization of interference effects (by satisfying a number of channel reuse constraints). Dynamic Channel Assignment (DCA) assigns the channels to the cells dynamically according to traffic demand, and hence, can provide higher capacity (or lower call blocking probability), fidelity and quality of service than the fixed assignment schemes. Channel assignment algorithms are formulated as combinatorial optimization problems and are NP-hard. Devising a DCA, that is practical, efficient, and which can generate high quality assignments, is challenging. Though Metaheuristic Search techniques like Evolutionary Algorithms, Differential Evolution, Particle Swarm Optimization prove effective in the solution of Fixed Channel Assignment (FCA) problems but they still require high computational time and therefore may be inefficient for DCA. A number of approaches have been proposed for the solution of DCA problem but the high complexity of these proposed approaches makes them unsuitable/less efficient for practical use. Therefore, this paper presents an effective and efficient Hybrid Discrete Binary Differential Evolution Algorithm (HDB-DE) for the solution of DCA Problem.