PLoS ONE (Jan 2024)
The concept of optimal planning of a linearly oriented segment of the 5G network.
Abstract
In the article, the extreme problem of finding the optimal placement plan of 5G base stations at certain points within a linear area of finite length is set. A fundamental feature of the author's formulation of the extreme problem is that it takes into account not only the points of potential placement of base stations but also the possibility of selecting instances of stations to be placed at a specific point from a defined excess set, as well as the aspect of inseparable interaction of placed 5G base stations within the framework of SON. The formulation of this extreme problem is brought to the form of a specific combinatorial model. The article proposes an adapted branch-and-bounds method, which allows the process of synthesis of the architecture of a linearly oriented segment of a 5G network to select the best options for the placement of base stations for further evaluation of the received placement plans in the metric of defined performance indicators. As the final stage of the synthesis of the optimal plan of a linearly oriented wireless network segment based on the sequence of the best placements, it is proposed to expand the parametric space of the design task due to the specific technical parameters characteristic of the 5G platform. The article presents a numerical example of solving an instance of the corresponding extremal problem. It is shown that the presented mathematical apparatus allows for the formation of a set of optimal placements taking into account the size of the non-coverage of the target area. To calculate this characteristic parameter, both exact and two approximate approaches are formalized. The results of the experiment showed that for high-dimensional problems, the approximate approach allows for reducing the computational complexity of implementing the adapted branch-and-bounds method by more than six times, with a slight loss of accuracy of the optimal solution. The structure of the article includes Section 1 (introduction and state-of-the-art), Section 2 (statement of the research, proposed models and methods devoted to the research topic), Section 3 (numerical experiment and analysis of results), and Section 4 (conclusions and further research).