Planning of UMTS core networks

Building new UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication Systems) based networks, seems to be on time. Nowadays the UMTS network design related problems are moving to the interconnection of radio network controllers (RNC), placement of media gateways (MGw) and planning of the core network topology. This new area of UMTS network design is studied in the paper. A new algorithm is proposed for the above tasks, which based on efficient meta-heuristics, but applies some problem related features to obtain as good a solution as possible. The paper overviews the UMTS core network structure, a possible abstraction of the real network and equipment from the viewpoint of network planning are proposed, furthermore the design algorithm is outlined and a detailed performance analysis is proposed using some network scenarios. It is important to note that the abstract model enables the application of the proposed algorithm for the same type of design task, but in different technology background.