Heuristic Approaches for Telecommunications Network Management, Planning and Expansion

The telecommunications industry is experiencing a worldwide explosion of growth as few other industries ever have. However, since the 1990s, the bulk of telecommunications services were delivered by the traditional telephone network, for which design and analysis principles had been under steady development for over three-quarters of a century. In such a near-static environment, attention was given to optimization techniques to squeeze out better profits from existing and limited future investments. Forecasts of network services were developed on a regular planning cycle and networks were optimized accordingly, layer by layer, for cost-effective placement of capacity and efficient utilization. This work is devoted to heuristic approaches for telecommunications network management, planning and expansion. This collection aims to bring to the attention of researchers and practitioners an array of techniques and case studies that meet the stringent "time to market" requirements of this industry and which deserve exposure to a wider audience.