Fixed spectrum frequency assignment using natural algorithms

The frequency assignment problem, known to be NP-complete, is to find an assignment of radio frequencies to a set of transmitters in a region. The transmitters satisfy a large number of constraints. This paper presents a simulated annealing algorithm for determining such an assignment and compares the results with those obtained from a genetic algorithm. We report on our computational experiments in terms of quality of the solutions obtained for realistic, computer generated problem instances.