Solving the hub location problem in telecommunication network design: a local search approach

This article deals with a Hub Location Problem arising in Telecommunication Network Design. The considered network presents two different kinds of nodes: access nodes, that represent source and destination of traffic demands but cannot be directly connected, and transit nodes, that have no own traffic demand but collect traffic from access nodes and route it through the network. Transit nodes are supposed to be fully connected. Given a set of access nodes and a set of potential locations for the transit nodes, the problem is to decide number and positions of the transit nodes to guarantee that all access nodes are allocated to a transit node, satisfying capacity constraints. The goal is to minimize the total cost of the network, which is the sum of connection costs and nodes fixed costs. The problem is a Hub Location Problem, which is known to be NP-hard. A local search approach is proposed, and different metaheuristic algorithms, such as tabu search, iterated local search and random multistart, have been developed, based on such local search. [A preliminary procedure has been developed in a research project joint with Telecom Italia (Turin Research & Innovation Laboratories) and a patent application has been filed to cover this issue.]