A Memetic Algorithm to Communication Network Design Taking into Consideration an Existing Network

It is well-known that utilizing existing network facilities in the construction of new network is very important in the case of short-term network design [1]. The reason is that existing network facilities are ready to be used and cannot be changed easily in a short period of time. For the short-term network design, we have studied the link capacity assignment for packet-switched networks with convex piecewise linear cost function, where the per-unit cost of using existing capacity is less than that of installing new capacity [2]. However, in other cases of network design such as long-term design, it is proper to consider the function as a concave function since the economy of scale is often present in communication resources. Some good examples are the cost function obtained by enveloping cost functions due to the development in communication transmission/switching technologies [3][4][5].