EXPLAIN - Explorative Net Planning

EXPLAIN is concerned with strategic planning of communication networks
in the telecommunication sector. The goal has been to construct a
planning tool to be used both on an operational and a strategic level
by net planners. The tool will have a visual user interface for both
in- and output, underlying modules dealing with traffic analysis and
network construction under varying assumptions on objectives (such as
cost and fail-safeness) and constraints, and the ability to handle
also scenarios with uncertainty regarding central parameters.
The project resulted in three Ph.D.-theses adressing the issues of
traffic, physical net planning, and optimization methods in network
design. The project part regarding user interface was left unsolved
due to recruitment problems.
Regarding the optimization methods, the key result was the ability to
take into account not only links and their costs, but also nodes and
costs of these when designing a communication network in the greenfield
case. Also, optimization of the ring architecture for communication
networks with protection was considered, and new results
questioning the current practice in design of this type of networks
was achieved.