Cells to Switches Assignment in Cellular Mobile Networks Using Metaheuristics

Cabling, handoff, and switching costs play pivotal roles in the design and development of cellular mobile networks. The assignment pattern consisting of which cell is to be connected to which switch can have a significant impact on the individual cost. In the presence of the limitation on the number of cells that can be assigned to a switch, the problem of the cell to switch assignment (CSA) becomes nondeterministic polynomial time hard to solve with all effective solutions being based on metaheuristic optimization algorithms (MOA) approach. This article applies three recently evolved MOA, namely, flower pollination algorithm (FPA), hunting search (HuS), and wolf search algorithm (WSA) for solving CSA problem. Comprehensive computational experiments conducted to collate the performance of the three algorithms indicate that FPA is superior to both HuS and WSA with respect to attaining the global best value and faster convergence with desired CSA.