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Mathematical Modelling and Comparisons of Four Heuristic Optimization Algorithms for WCDMA Radio Network Planning
Jie Zhang, Jun Yang, Mehmet E. Aydin, Joyce Y. Wu Centre for Wireless Network Design (CWIND), Dept. of Computing and Information Systems University of Luton, Luton, LU1 3JU, UK Tel.: +44 1582 743288, Email: jie.zhang@luton.ac.uk ABSTRACT In order to obtain accurate and reliable network planning and optimization results. The characteristics of WCDMA networks such as power control, soft handover (SHO) and the strong couplings between coverage and capacity have to be modelled accurately. These characteristics lead to unprecedented complexity of WCDMA radio network planning and optimisation that has not been seen in previous cellular networks. In this paper, we will present mathematical models that consider the characteristics of WCDMA radio networks. We will also present and compare the performance of four optimisation algorithms based on meta-heuristics that can be used to find solutions for practical WCDMA radio network planning and optimisation. Keywords: WCDMA, mathematical modelling, radio network planning, optimization algorithms. 1. INTRODUCTION 3G (3rd Generation) cellular networks such as WCDMA are being rapidly deployed/expanded. Without proper planning, a WCDMA radio network can neither be successfully deployed, nor be successfully expanded. While in operation, a WCDMA radio network undergoes frequent optimizations according to changing demands and new business models, which is similar to planning except that the vast majority of site locations are already fixed. A well planned and optimized WCDMA radio network can provide some 30% extra capacities under the same infrastructure cost. Hence, network planning and optimization plays a vital role for the deployment and maintenance of WCDMA radio networks. Cellular network planning and optimization is not a new topic, but as new technologies emerge, the subject remains as fresh as before. It has been proved that WCDMA radio network planning is a NP-hard problem [1], therefore, meta-heuristics rather than other exact optimization methods are more suitable for WCDMA network optimization. In this paper, we will present mathematical models that consider the characteristics of WCDMA radio networks. We will also present and compare the performance of four optimisation algorithms based on metaheuristics that can be used to find solutions for practical WCDMA radio network planning and optimisation. 2. INTEGER PROGRAMMING MODELS FOR WCDMA RADIO NETWORK PLANNING Once the system has been dimensioned, the whole area under consideration can be divided into K regions, and each region i (i = 1K) contains ni candidate sites where base stations (BSs) can be installed. Assume the set of candidate sites is S = {1, , p}, p = i =1 ni . Only one candidate site to install a BS is allowed to be selected
K

from each region, and an installation cost ci is associated with each candidate site i, i S. With this simplified network scenario, the optimization process turns to be more affordable on a personal computer. The service area is represented by a set of mobile station M = {1,, q}, and the required number of simultaneously active connections of Mobile Station (MS) j is denoted by rj , j M. The problem now is to select one candidate site from each region to install a BS such that the traffic capacity and the number of covered MSs are maximized with the lowest installation cost. Each candidate site is denoted by a binary variable ui {0, 1}, such that:
1 site i is used ui = 0 else i S.

(1)

The propagation information is also supposed to be known. Let gij and gij be the propagation factors of the UL and DL connection between BS i and MS j, respectively. The propagation gain is estimated according to the empirical propagation models such as Hata model or deterministic ray tracing models that are more precise but computationally intensive. We assume that a CPICH (Common Pilot Channel) signal can be detected if and only if the Ec/I0 (energy-perchip-to-interference-density ratio) is not less than a given threshold 0. The binary variable tij is to denote the CPICH signal detection subject to the following condition:

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CPICH 0 1 when ( E c / I 0 )ij tij = 0 else

i S, j M

(2)

where (Ec/I0)ijCPICH is the Ec/I0 of CPICH signal from BS i at MS j. If one or more CPICH signals are detected, the best server is chosen to be the BS whose CPICH is received by the MS with the highest level. That is denoted by

1 BS i is the best server of MS j bij = 0 else

i S, j M

(3)

For simplicity, only CPICH channel and dedicated physical data channel (DPDCH) are considered in the downlink. Consider a 2-way soft handover, i.e., one MS connects to two BSs (SHO scenarios with more than 2 connections can be analysed in a similar way). Define sijk as
1 sijk = 0 MS j is in SHO with BS i and BS k , BS i is the best server i, k S , j M . else

(4)

and also define sj as 1 MS j is in SHO sj = 0 else j M. (5)

Four kinds of SHO gains are taken into account: SHO gains over the received power in uplink, SHO gains over the APR (Average Power Rise) in uplink, SHO gains over the power control headroom in uplink, and SHO gains over the transmission power in downlink. All SHO gains are functions of MS speed and the received power level difference between radio links with BS i and BS k, these functions are obtained from link-level simulations. For practical WCDMA radio network planning and optimisation, some constraints should be considered in the optimisation, such as: 1. To be severed by the network, the MS should receive at least one CPICH signal with an Ec/I0 that exceeds the threshold value of CPICH signal detection. 2. An MS severed by the network must have one and only one best sever, whose CPICH signal is received with the highest Ec/I0 at the MS (without consideration of call admission controlCAC). 3. In downlink, the relative CPICH power is used to determine the SHO server. Therefore, for an MS that is in the SHO state, at least one CPICH signal from a BS rather than its best sever should be received by the MS with a power that differs from its best server by no more than a threshold value. This BS will be added into the active set of the MS and selected as one SHO server. With the consideration of installation costs, system coverage and traffic capacity, the cost function can be formulated as:
ci ui T n + 2 1 cov ered + 3 1 severed min 1 iS q Ttotal ci iS

(6)

where ncovered is the number of MSs that severed by the network, Ttotal is total required traffic, and Tsevered is the traffic supported by the network. 1, 2, and 3 are associated weighting factors for the normalized installation cost, the percentage of uncovered MSs, and the percentage of unsupported traffic. Other performance indicators, such as uplink and downlink loading factors, pilot power, quality of received signal and SHO area etc., can also be taken into account in the cost function with proper weighting factors, and this framework stands extendable if one wants to work out with more variables. To find a set of candidate sites, with which the cost function achieves the minimum, is the task of optimization algorithms. WCDMA radio network planning a multi-objective optimization problem, which can be solved as a single-objective problem by assigning different weighting factors to different objective terms, as shown in (6), or can be solved by using the method of Pareto front.
3. OPTIMISATION STRATEGIES AND HEURISTIC OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHMS The problem discussed in the above section turns to be a p-median problem when only BS location is considered as the decision variable. Moreover, we implement a particular reductionism that result in a significant shrinking of the search space. The p-median problem constitutes seeking p number of locations each time regardless of how distant the sites are, while we divide the whole region under consideration into p (K in this case as denoted in Section II) segments. Every time one candidate site is selected from each segment. That makes the search easier and more affordable on a personal computer. The solutions are altered within their neighborhood via the neighborhood structures, which are very effective

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on the performance of exploration with search methods. In this study, we identified a neighborhood structure working based on a totally random selection which is proved to be robust for different problem instances and can avoid the limitations with some directed exploration heuristics. Therefore, the main neighbourhood structure offers moving to a neighboring state by simply and randomly switching to another candidate site. In this paper, we have examined and used one simple hill climbing local search algorithm (Greedy) and three well-known meta-heuristics: namely Genetic Algorithm (GA), Simulated Annealing (SA), and Tabu Search (TS). Throughout the study, we worked out the critical parameters to fine tune the implementations. The SA has been implemented with a recently proposed approach, which is called evolutionary SA (ESA) [3], while GA and TS algorithms are kept rather standard. The greedy algorithm implemented in this work is used to benchmark the performance of other heuristic algorithms. It does a simple hill climbing local search with the neighbourhood structure used across the whole study. The idea is to look for a better state of solution, if the state altered is better than the original one, the move is adopted; otherwise, it is rejected and go to another neighbouring state. Using such a simple algorithm, we test the minimum level of achievable optimization, which will benchmark other heuristic algorithms, and the hardness of the problem instances. If a heuristics algorithm cannot outperform the greedy algorithm, then it has a serious correctness problem.
4. EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES A. Simulation configuration Based on the above-mentioned mathematical models, we developed a static simulator for WCDMA network to evaluate the performance of different heuristic optimisation algorithms. An example area for setting up a WCDMA network is shown in Figure 1. We consider a rectangular service area of 18km16km containing K = 19 base stations with 3-sector antennas, i.e. 57 cells in total. All 3-sector antennas are installed with the azimuth being 0o offset from north and 0o down tilt. For each BS, ni = n = 5 candidate sites are kept available, from which only one site will be selected to install a BS. q = 3600 traffic nodes (TN) are uniformly distributed in this area, and all TNs have a traffic activity factor of 1.0.

8000 6000 4000

Candidate Site

Y-coordinate[m]

2000 0 -2000 -4000 -6000 -8000 -8000 -6000 -4000 -2000

X-coordinate[m]

2000

4000

6000

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Figure 1. The example area to be considered for a WCDMA network. Network parameters used in the simulation are listed in Table 1. Table 1. Network parameters used in the simulation. Traffic 12.2 kbps voice Chip rate Max. BS Tx power 43 dBm Max. BS Tx power per link CPICH power 30 dBm Max. MS Tx power Threshold of CPICH Ec/I0 -18 dB Noise power density UL Eb/N0 requirement 4.0 dB DL Eb/N0 requirement DL orthogonality 0.7 Traffic activity factor 3.84 Mcps 40 dBm 24 dBm -174 dBm/Hz 11.0 dB 1.0

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B. Configuring the Heuristic Algorithms The parameter settings of the heuristic optimization algorithms used in this work are shown in Table 2. Table 2. Parameter settings of heuristic optimization algorithms. GA population size 20 GA crossover probability 0.1 GA generation number 200 GA mutation probability 0.9 GA crossover probability 0.1 ESA population size 1 Iteration number for each SA operator in ESA 200 Number of inner iterations for ESA 15 TS Tabu list size/Neighbourhood list size 13 C. Experimental results Figure 2 shows the results obtained from them with 6000 iterations (ns=6000), which is normally a very small number of iterations for heuristic search algorithms to offer a reasonable solution. This corresponds to a quick search. Each experiment was repeated 100 times with the same conditions. Thus there are 100 optimization results obtained with each algorithm for a particular network instance. All the results were sorted in ascending order for a better display. Thus, the best results come first, the others thereafter, and all unwanted results remain in late part of the figure.

0.31

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Resulting Cost

0.29

Greedy GA ESA TS

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0.26

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Index of results

50

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80

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Figure 2. Results of heuristic algorithms; sorted in ascending order (ns = 6000). Obviously, the best results obtained are with TS as Figure 2 shows that TS hits the best solution (0.255) for 25 times out of 100 runs, while ESA hits it 19 times, i.e. 6% less than TS, Greedy does 8 times, and GA hits it with an even smaller number (4 times). For TS, only 1 result is slightly bigger than 0.265, it shows that TS has a very strong ability to hit the optimum or near-optimum solutions even with a small number of searches. Although it is reported that SA converges to the global optimal with probability 1.0 [2], that does not mean any SA implementation would reach the optimum in the earlier stage of the search. As a well studied SA implementation, ESA provides very impressive but not as good as TS does. It has 6 results that are bigger than 0.265 while TS produced only 1 over that value. This performance reveals that ESA needs further iterations and further investigations for better one.
5. CONCLUSIONS In this paper, we proposed an integer programming model for WCDMA radio network planning and optimization. Four heuristic algorithms, namely tabu search, simulated annealing, genetic algorithm and hill climbing local search, are used to find optimized network configurations. The experiments show that TS achieved the best performance and outperformed the other heuristics, while the worst performance appeared with Greedy algorithm, which was expected. ESA did slightly worse than TS, but GA was strongly significantly worse, even with a delicate search.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The work is supported by the EPSRC under grant number GR/S69429/01, and The Nuffield Foundation under the grant number NAL/00717/G. REFERENCES

[1]

[2] [3]

E. Amaldi, A. Capone, and F. Malucelli, Planning UMTS Base Station Location: Optimization Models With Power Control and Algorithms, IEEE Trans. Wireless Communications, vol. 2, no. 5, pp. 939-952, Sep. 2003. V. Laarhoven, P.J.M. and E.H. Aarts. Simulate Annealing: Theory and Applications. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1987. M.E. Aydin and T.C. Fogarty, A Distributed Evolutionary Simulated Annealing for Combinatorial Optimization Problems, Journal of Heuristics, vol. 10, no. 3., pp. 269-292, 2004.