Efficient heuristics for wireless network tower placement

Over the last decade, telecommunications companies have invested nearly 100 billion dollars in the development of an impressive fiber optic backbone which is capable of transmitting data at incredible speeds. However, much of this backbone remains unused because of the data capacity bottleneck which exists at the user level. While various technologies have emerged to provide greater end-point capacity, many of these are of limited availability due to cost or technical considerations. One promising technology has been high-speed wireless service. Wireless service has the potential to provide widespread coverage, but the cost of developing the infrastructure such as antenna towers can be formidable. While models have been developed to assist in the planning for minimum cost tower placement, these models can be quite large and complex to solve. This paper explores alternate solution methods based on heuristic approaches which may allow for the solution of much larger tower placement problems.