Genetic Algorithm approach for Bandpass Problem

Bandpass Problem (BP) is a telecommunication problem. This problem arises in considering the optimal packing of information flows on different wavelengths into groups to obtain the highest available cost reduction in design and operating the optical communication networks using wavelength division multiplexing technology. Given a rectangular matrix A of binary elements {0, 1} and a positive integer B called the Bandpass Number, a set of B consecutive non-zero elements in any column is called a Bandpass. No two bandpasses in the same column can have common rows. The Bandpass problem consists of finding an optimal permutation of rows of the matrix, which produces the maximum total number of bandpasses having the same given bandpass number in all columns. This combinatorial problem arises in considering the optimal packing of information flows on different wavelengths into groups to obtain the highest available cost reduction in design and operating the optical communication networks using wavelength division multiplexing technology. Bandpass problem is in NP-hard class. Therefore, in this paper, a meta-heuristic method, Genetic Algorithms (GA), which are close to optimal solution but do not always find optimal solution, are formed. This GAs have been tested on bandpass library problems (Babayev et al., 2007a) and the results are discussed. © Izmir University of Economics, Turkey, 2010.