Adaptive radio spectrum allocation through mid-term reconfigurations for cellular communications systems

A fundamental problem in cellular communications systems is the adaptation of the frequency allocation to the traffic fluctuations. Traffic adaptation may be achieved by a computationally efficient solution to the following p roblem: "Given the radio spectrum available, the cell structure, the curren t traffic conditions, and an already established allocation of frequencies to cells, find a new optimal allocation that is more suitable for handling the current traffic conditions, taking into account the previous allocation and subject to the restrictions arising from the interference conditions". In this article, this problem is formally defined, optimally formulated an d solved in a computationally efficient manner. The results provided demons trate a significant increase in the efficiency with which the available spe ctrum is utilised, using as a basis for comparison legacy frequency allocat ion schemes. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.