Solving the frequency assignment problem by using meta-heuristic methods

Frequency assignment, as a subclass of general assignment problem, is a non-deterministic polynomial-time hard (NP-hard) optimization problem. Main difficulty in these types of problems is the time required to find an optimum solution, since the solution time increases exponentially as the size of the problem grows. To solve the problem in a limited computation time, meta-heuristic methods are adopted. In this study, a frequency assignment problem with conflicting objectives is described. This multi-objective optimization problem is reduced to a single objective one using a scalarization approach. Genetic Algorithm and Particle Swarm Optimization are used to find a solution to the problem. Comparisons of the performances of alternative methods are carried out for the identified problem. Results show that the proposed methods can get a solution which is quite acceptable in terms of interference levels.