ARTICLE IN PRESS

Computers & Operations Research 37 (2010) 2152–2163

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Computers & Operations Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/caor

Frequency assignment problem in satellite communications using

differential evolution
Ayed A. Salman a,, Imtiaz Ahmad a, Mahamed G.H. Omran b, Mohammad Gh. Mohammad a
a
Computer Engineering Department, Kuwait University, Kuwait
b
Department of Computer Science, Gulf University for Science and Technology, Kuwait

a r t i c l e in f o a b s t r a c t

Available online 18 March 2010 Satellite communications technology has a tremendous impact in refining our world. The frequency
Keywords: assignment problem is of a fundamental importance when it comes to providing high-quality
Combinatorial optimization transmissions in satellite communication systems. The NP-complete frequency assignment problem in
Differential evolution satellite communications involves the rearrangement of frequencies of one set of carriers while keeping
Evolutionary computations the other set fixed in order to minimize the largest and total interference among carriers. In this paper,
Frequency assignment Problem we present a number of algorithms, based on differential evolution, to solve the frequency assignment
NP-complete problem. We investigate several schemes ranging from adaptive differential evolution to hybrid
Satellite communication algorithms in which heuristic is embedded within differential evolution. The effectiveness and
robustness of our proposed algorithms is demonstrated through solving a set of benchmark problems
and comparing the results with a number of previously proposed techniques that solve the same
problem. Experimental results show that our proposed algorithms, in general, and hybrid ones in
particular, outperform the existing algorithms both in terms of the quality of the solutions and
computational time.
Crown Copyright & 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Application specific models and solutions have been developed

Multi-billion dollar satellite communication technology have
refined our world by playing a key role in creating a global culture
by spreading worldwide entertainment, stimulating technological
interchange, and promoting trade around the world [1,2]. The
explosive growth of essential applications resulted in an increase
in the number of geostationary satellites thus multiple satellites
may be circulating on the same orbit. When two or more satellites
share the same orbit and use the same transmission frequency,
they often experience what is known as cochannel interference
which severely degrades both the quality and operation of the
system. Therefore, the minimization of such interference has
become a key design issue in satellite communications to provide
high-quality transmission [3]. In order to minimize cochannel
interference, the frequencies used by various satellites (in the
system) must be re-arranged to find the optimal frequency
assignment necessary to provide high quality transmissions.
Frequency assignment problems (FAP) arise in many areas such
as mobile telephony, wireless LANs, and radio/TV broadcasting.
 Corresponding author. Tel.: + 965 249 87412.
E-mail addresses: ayed.salman@ku.edu.kw (A.A. Salman),
imtiaz@eng.kuniv.edu.kw (I. Ahmad), Omran.m@gust.edu.kw (M.G. Omran),
mohammad@eng.kuniv.edu.kw (M.G. Mohammad).
for frequency assignment problems in different areas [4,5]. In this
work, we target FAP in satellite communications systems where
frequencies of one set of carriers are to be rearranged while
keeping the other set fixed with the objective to minimize the
largest and total interference among carriers.
The frequency assignment problem is known to be an NP-
complete problem [6], thus, a good exact algorithm for its optimal
solution in polynomial time is unlikely to exist. Therefore, optimal
solution strategies must be sacrificed in favor of fast heuristic
techniques. Because of the intractable nature of the frequency
assignment problem and its importance in providing high-quality
transmission in satellite communication, it is highly desirable to
explore avenues for developing good heuristic algorithms for the
problem. A number of previous proposed solutions with varying
degree of success have been proposed [6–13].
In [6,7], the authors proposed a systematic method for
determining carrier frequency assignment to minimize cochannel
interference by applying a branch-and-bound algorithm. The short-
coming in their approach is that the branch-and-bound algorithm
may fail when applied on large problem instances. Kurokawa et al.
in [8] proposed an alternative approach based on neural network,
however, their algorithm scales poorly and is rather expensive in
terms of computational resources and time. A gradual neural
network method, which gradually expands the activated neuron
during the search process was later proposed in [9]. The method

0305-0548/$ - see front matter Crown Copyright & 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.cor.2010.03.004
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
A.A. Salman et al. / Computers & Operations Research 37 (2010) 2152–2163
in [9] finds better solutions by taking care of constraint satisfaction
and the goal function optimization simultaneously.
Sanz et al. [10,11] presented hybrid methods that combine
the Hopfield neural network with simulated annealing [10]
and genetic algorithm [11] to solve the frequency assignment
problem. In their technique, fast digital Hopfield neural network
manages the problem’s constraints and simulated annealing
or genetic algorithm searches for better quality solutions.
Wang et al. [12,13] presented a noisy chaotic neural network
with variable threshold to solve the frequency assignment
problem. In their approach, the optimization term was separated
from the constraint term in the cost function by assigning different
neurons with variable thresholds. This technique obtains better
solutions compared with both techniques proposed in [9,10].
In this work, we propose new, fast, and scalable algorithms
based on differential evolution (DE) to solve the frequency
assignment problem. Differential evolution is a relatively new
evolutionary algorithm, proposed by Storn and Price [14], which
has been successfully applied to solve a wide range of optimiza-
tion problems [15–17]. DE is similar to others evolution
algorithms where a population of individuals are used to search
for an optimal solution [18]. The key difference is that mutation in
DE algorithm is an arithmetic combination of individuals [18]
whereas in traditional evolutionary algorithms, it is the result of
small perturbations to the genes of an individual. Moreover, in DE,
the trial solutions are generated by adding weighted difference
vectors to the target vector followed by a recombination
(or crossover) step to produce an offspring which is only accepted
if it improves the fitness of the parent individual. DE is easy to
implement, requires little parameter tuning [19] and exhibits fast
convergence [20]. Nevertheless, due to its continuous nature,
applying DE algorithm to solve combinatorial problems is still
limited. In this work, we investigate the potential use of DE to
provide effective and efficient solution for FAP in satellite
communications. The major obstacle in tailoring DE towards our
needs is that DE is introduced as global optimizer over continuous
search spaces while FAP in satellite communications is of
combinatorial nature with discrete decision variables. Therefore,
to apply DE on FAP we have either to find an appropriate mapping
algorithm to convert floating-point vectors to actual frequency
assignment solution, or to adapt basic DE operators to present the
FAP solution. We propose several schemes to solve FAP problem
using DE such as adaptive differential evolution, standard DE with
appropriate mapping, and hybrid algorithms (where a greedy
heuristic is embedded within adaptive or standard differential
evolution) as it will be discussed later. A thorough analysis has
been performed to provide sufficient evidences that the proposed
Sat 1
Sat 2
System 1 System 2
ES 1 ES 2
Fig. 1. Outline of cochannel interference.
2153
algorithms are indeed very effective and efficient to solve for the
frequency assignment problem.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. A brief
introduction to FAP in satellite communications is presented in
Section 2. Section 3 provides an overview for Differential
Evolution algorithm. Our proposed methods are presented in
Section 4. Experimental results are reported and discussed in
Section 5. Finally, in Section 6 we draw some conclusions.
2. Problem definition
Satellite communications technology has become of paramount
importance in global economy and culture [1,2]. In satellite
communication systems, two or more satellites in the same orbit
experience cochannel interference when using the same frequency
which severely degrades the quality of transmission in the system.
Therefore, to provide high-quality transmissions, cochannel inter-
ference minimization becomes an important design issue in
satellite communications [3]. Frequency assignment problem in
satellite communication systems is described as a typical example
of constrained combinatorial optimization problem [9–13].
This paper follows the FAP formulation given in [7] which has
been applied in numerous algorithms such as [9–13]. Fig. 1
illustrates intersystem cochannel interference between two
adjacent satellites when operating on the same frequency band.
In such a system, each carrier can be described as a collection of
consecutive unit segments in a frequency band [6], hence, the
interference between two M-segment systems can be described
by an M  M matrix (denoted as E) where each element, eij, stands
for the cochannel interference cost when segment ‘‘i’’ in system 2
uses a common frequency with segment ‘‘j’’ in system 1
(interference cost between segment ‘‘i’’ in system 2 and
segment ‘‘j’’ in system 1). Therefore, the FAP can be described as
the rearrangement of the frequencies assigned to system 2
carriers to minimize the largest interference and at the same
time minimizing the sum of total interference (hence multi-
objectives FAP [9]). For example, Fig. 3 shows the interference
matrix for the segmented frequency banks systems in Fig. 2 and a
possible optimal reassignment of the frequencies as shown in
Fig. 4. Therefore, to solve FAP, the following three constraints
(C1, C2, C3) must be fulfilled [9–13]:
C1 Every segment in system 2 must be assigned to a segment in
system 1.
C2 Every segment in system 1 can be assigned to at most one
segment in system 2.
System #1 C11 C12 C13
Fa Fb Frequency
Interference
System #2 C21 C22 C23 C24
Fa Fb Frequency
Fig. 2. Cochannel interference model of the system in Fig. 1.
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C3 All the segments of each carrier in system 2 must be assigned mutation operator favors exploration, however, as evolution
to consecutive segments in system 1 in the same order. progresses, the mutation operator favors exploitation [21]. Hence,
DE automatically adapts the mutation increments (i.e. search step)
Moreover, the objectives of FAP are to minimize the largest to the best value based on the stage of the evolutionary process and
interference and to minimize the sum of total interference, hence, not based on a predefined probability density function. DE has been
in order to minimize the peak of interference between the successfully applied to solve a wide range of optimization problems
systems (largest interference), the first objective function can be such as clustering [19], unsupervised image classification [22],
described as follows [10,11]: digital filter design [23], and other non-linear function/process
optimization [24–27]. In short, DE is generally considered as a
F1 ¼ maxðei,j  fi,j Þ 8i,j where i,j ¼ 1, . . . ,M ð1Þ
reliable, accurate, robust, and fast optimization technique used in
where M and ei,j represent the number of segments and cochannel many practical optimization problems.
interference cost between ‘‘i’’ and ‘‘j’’, respectively. Moreover, fi,j is Unlike other evolutionary algorithms, differential evolution (DE)
a boolean function that returns 1 if segment ‘‘i’’ has been assigned does not use a probability distribution function to introduce
to segment ‘‘j’’, and 0 otherwise. The second objective function of variations into the population. Instead, DE uses the difference
FAP requires that the total interference of the systems to be between randomly selected vectors (individuals) as the source of
minimum resulting in a second optimization function as follows: variation for a third vector referred to as the target vector. Trial
solutions are generated by adding a weighted difference vectors to
M X
X M
F2 ¼ eij  fij ð2Þ the target vector. This process is referred to as the mutation operator
i¼1j¼1 where the target vector is mutated. A recombination, or crossover
step is then applied to produce an offspring which is only accepted if
it improves the fitness of the parent individual. The basic DE
3. Differential evolution algorithm is described in more detail below with reference to the
three evolution operators: mutation, crossover, and selection:
Differential evolution is an evolution algorithm proposed by Mutation: For each parent, xi(t) of generation t, a trial vector,
Storn and Price [14] which is similar to other evolutionary vi,j(t), is created by mutating a target vector. Randomly select the
algorithms where a population of individuals is used to search for target vector xi3 ðtÞ, with ia i3 . Then, two individuals xi1 ðtÞ, and
an optimal solution [18]. The main difference between traditional xi2 ðtÞ are randomly selected with i1 a i2 a i3 ai and the difference
evolutionary algorithms and DE is that in traditional evolutionary vector xi1 xi2 is calculated. The trial vector is then calculated as
algorithms, mutation results in small perturbations to the genes of vi,j ðtÞ ¼ xi3 ðtÞ þFðxi1 ðtÞxi2 ðtÞÞ ð3Þ
an individual while in DE the mutation is an arithmetic combination
of individuals [18]. At the beginning of the evolution process, the DE where the term Fðxi1 ðtÞxi2 ðtÞÞ A ð0,1Þ represents the mutation
step size and F is a scaling factor used to control the amplification
of the differential variation.
C11 C12 C13
Crossover: DE follows a discrete recombination approach
S11 S12 S13 S14 S15 S16 where elements from the parent vector xi(t) are combined with
elements from the trial vector, vi(t), to produce the offspring mi ðtÞ.
C21 S21 20 20 40 0 25 25
Assuming a binomial crossover, the offspring can be described
S22 50 10 30 0 55 * using the following equation:
C22 (
S23 * 50 30 0 15 55 vi,j ðtÞ if randð0,1Þ oCR or j ¼ r
mi,j ¼ x ðtÞ otherwise ð4Þ
i,j
C23 S24 30 20 45 0 15 35

S25 45 5 25 0 50 * where j ¼1,y,Nd where Nd is the number of genes (parameters) of

C24 a single individual, rand(1,y,Nd), and CR A ½0,1 is the probability
S26 * 45 25 0 10 50 of reproduction. Thus, each offspring is a stochastic linear
combination of three randomly chosen individuals when
Fig. 3. The interference matrix of the system in Fig. 2. randð0,1Þ oCR; otherwise the offspring inherits its parameters

C11
System #1 C12 C13
S11 S12 S13 S14 S15 S16 Segment

System #2 C21 C22 C23 C24

Initial assignment S21 S22 S23 S24 S25 S26 Segment

System #2 C23 C24 C22 C21

Optimum assignment S24 S25 S26 S22 S23 S21 Segment

Fig. 4. Segmentation of the system defined in Figs. 1–3.

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A.A. Salman et al. / Computers & Operations Research 37 (2010) 2152–2163 2155

directly from the parent. Even when CR ¼0, at least one of the directing the search toward optimal solution, then selecting a
parameters of the offspring will be different from the parent proper objective function is of paramount importance [29]. Our
(forced by the condition j¼r). objective function (fitness function) is a weighted sum of both, the
Selection: DE implements selection procedure by forcing FAP’s constraints violation and the values of the optimization
the generated offspring, mi ðtÞ to replace the parent, xi(t), only if functions (i.e. largest and total interference). The weight of
the fitness of the offspring is better than that of the parent. violating any constraint is higher than that of the optimization
Algorithm 1 shows the pseudo-code for the DE: function to ensure producing feasible solutions. Therefore, we
propose the following fitness function:
Algorithm 1. Simple DE algorithm.
FðTÞ ¼ WH  ðC1þ C2 þ C3Þ þ W1  F1 þW2  F2 ð5Þ
Initialize a population P;
Evaluate P; where WH is the weighting coefficient of constraints violation and
repeat Wi represents the weighting coefficients for objective ‘‘i’’. More-
 over, Ci denotes constraint ‘‘i’’ of FAP whereas Fi is the objective
 for each individual in the population do
 function (largest and total interference, respectively) as was
  Let i ,i , and i be three random integers in ½1,s;
 1 2 3
 described in Section 2.
  Let r ¼ randð1,Nd Þ;


  for j ¼ 1 to Nd do
 4.1. DE with permutation linkage (DEPL)
   if randð0,1Þ o CR or j ¼ r then

    v ðtÞ ¼ x þ Fðx x Þ;
    i,j i3 ,j i1 ,j i2 ,j
 In this algorithm we adapt DE by employing the idea of linkage

   else crossover [30,31] and discrete permutation [32]. In DEPL, each
   
    vi,j ðtÞ ¼ xi,j ; individual is represented by discrete numbers where a target


 individual is modified by permuting its values and then the
  end
 linkage crossover is utilized in an attempt to create a valid
  end
 solution. A detailed description of the various steps used in DEPL

  if f ðvi Þ of ðxi Þ then algorithm are given below:

   xi ¼ vi ; Representation: Each individual represented by an array of size


 end M where M is number of segments and is shown in Fig. 5. In this

 end figure, the value of kth gene of i th individual specifies the
until the terminating condition is achieved; segment from system ‘‘1’’ which has been assigned to the kth
segment in system ‘‘2’’. This representation has the advantage
that it can always satisfy the first and the second constraints,
hence C 1 and C 2 in Eq. (5) can always be set to zero while C 3
Price and Storn [28] proposed ten different strategies for DE
must be checked for each solution. The solution will be considered
based on the individual being perturbed, the number of indivi-
feasible when C3 evaluates to zero.
duals used in the mutation process, and the type of crossover used.
Initialization: Each gene is initialized with a random segment
The strategy described above is known as ‘‘DE/rand/1’’ using the
from system ‘‘1’’ such that there are no two genes assigned to the
notation ‘‘DE/x/y’’ where ‘‘x’’ represents the individual being
same segment, hence, the initial population starts with indivi-
perturbed, and ‘‘y’’ gives the number of difference vectors used
duals which do not necessary satisfy constraint C3 but always
to perturb ‘‘x’’ [27]. Therefore, ‘‘DE/rand/1’’ strategy means that
fulfill constraints C1 and C2.
the target vector is randomly selected and only one difference
Mutation: In this approach, the mutation operator is applied to
vector is used. This strategy is considered the most successful and
rearrange the starting positions (i.e. the first assigned segment) of
widely used one [27]. Other DE strategies include ‘‘DE/best/1’’,
carriers to investigate new solution as described in the Pseudo-
‘‘DE/best/2’’, ‘‘DE/rand/2’’ and ‘‘DE/randto-best/1’’. A detailed
code given in Algorithm 2.
discussion of these and other strategies can be found in [29].
Algorithm 2. A pseudo-code for mutation operator in DEPL
method.
4. Proposed approaches
for each carrier do

One of the major challenges in tailoring DE to be applied to FAP  if randð0,1Þ oCR or j ¼ r then

in satellite communication problem is that DE is introduced as a   Let s ¼ current starting segment for the carrier;
 i

global optimizer over continuous search space while FAP is of a   Let sx a si is a randomly selected segment and
 sx can be used as newly
combinatorial nature with discrete decision variables. Therefore, 
 starting segment for the carrier;
to apply DE on FAP we have either to find an appropriate mapping 
  Swap the places of s and s ;
algorithm to convert floating-point vectors to the actual fre-  i x

quency assignment solutions, or adapt basic operators of DE to  end
present the FAP solutions. In this paper we consider both of these end
approaches in addition to approaches in which heuristics are
embedded within DE. The remainder of this section describes the Crossover: In crossover operator, we employ the idea of linkage
proposed methods and how DE has been tailored to solve FAP by: crossover [30,31] with minor modifications. In our approach, the
(1) identifying the representation of population individuals, strength of linkages between components of individual structure
(2) describing the mechanism of generating initial population,
(3) describing any modification to DE operators (e.g. mutation, C21 C22 C23 C24

crossover, selection) or embedded heuristic if applicable.

Before delving into the details, it is important to identify the 3 4 5 2 0 1
objective function that is used to measure the solution’s
effectiveness. Since the objective function plays a key role in Fig. 5. Representation of DEPL’s solution.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
2156 A.A. Salman et al. / Computers & Operations Research 37 (2010) 2152–2163

(i.e. segments) are determined dynamically for each individual
and are controlled by carriers’ lengths. For example; if carrier i
with length ci ¼3 is assigned to segment 2 from system ‘‘1’’, then
according to this rule, there is a strong linkage between the
consecutive segments 2, 3 and 4 in system ‘‘1’’.
Selection: All proposed algorithms use the standard selection
operator, thus in the selection phase, the generated offspring mi ,
replaces parent, xi only if its fitness is better than its parent.
The starting segment of each carrier in the offspring mi is either
inherited from the mutated individual (vi) or inherited from the
parent individual (xi). All remaining segments are re-arranged to
be consecutive with the current starting segment. Algorithm 3
shows the pseudo-code to produce the offspring mi in DEPL.
Algorithm 3. A pseudo-code for crossover operator in DEPL
method.
Initialization: Each gene is initialized with a random value
between [0,1] representing the carrier’s priority.
Mutation and Crossover: PDE approach uses standard DE
operators as it was described in Section 3 and are used to
generate new priority values for each carrier.
Mapping to FAP solutions: By ranking the carriers according to
their priorities, the segments from system ‘‘1’’ are assigned in a
consecutive manner. For example, given the priority assignment
to each carrier as shown in Fig. 6 and given the same example of
FAP problem used earlier in Section 2, the carriers will be
arranged as C24, C23, C21, C22. Since both C24 and C22 can carry
two segments each, while C23 and C21 can carry one segment,
then segments 1, 2 from system ‘‘1’’ will be assigned to C24,
segment 3 from system ‘‘1’’ will be assigned to C23, segments 4
from system ‘‘1’’ will be assigned to C21, and segment 5, 6 from
system ‘‘1’’ will be assigned to C22.

Set mi ¼ xi ; 4.3. Permutation priority DE (PPDE)

for each carrier do

 Let ki ¼ starting segment for the carrier in m ; In this approach, we use the same idea that is explained in
 i
 Section 4.2 (i.e priority based DE), however, in this method we
 Let kj ¼ starting segment for the carrier in vi ;
 deal with discrete permutations instead of floating point values.
 if randð0,1Þ o CR then
 The following is the details of this approach:

  Let k~j is another segment in mi such that k~j ¼ kj ;
 Representation: Each individual represented by an array of size

  Swap the places of k~j and ki in mi ; N (number of carriers) as shown in Fig. 7 where the value of kth

  Swap all remaining segments gene of i th individual specifies a priority associated with kth

 for the carrier to be consecutive carrier in system ‘‘2’’.

 new starting segment k~j ;
 Initialization: Each gene is initialized with a random integer

 else value between [1, N] specifying the carrier’s priority in such a way

  if randð0,1Þ ZCR and ki is a valid starting segment that each carrier is assigned a different priority value.
 for the carrier in mi then
 Mutation: In order to investigate new solutions, the

   Swap all remaining segments mutation operator permutes priorities assigned to carriers. The
 
 with new starting segment
 with new starting segment kj ; procedure used to produce the mutated individual vi is given in

 Algorithm 4.

 end
 Algorithm 4. A pseudo-code for mutation operator in PPDE
 end
method.
end
for each carrier do

 if randð0,1Þ oPr then

  Let si ¼ current assigned priority for the carrier;
4.2. Priority based DE (PDE) 

  Let sx ¼ si is the priority for
  another randomly selected carrier;

In this method, we use the mapping technique to convert DE’s 
 Swap the places of si and sx ;
floating-point values to FAP solutions. In this approach, each 
 end
carrier is associated with a floating-point value that represents its
priority (see Fig. 6). By using this priority, the carriers are ranked end
such that the carrier with the highest value comes first, then the
carrier with second highest value, and so on. After that, and Crossover: In PPDE, the crossover operator works probabilisti-
according to the carriers order, segments from system ‘‘1’’ are cally rearranging the priorities of the carriers in the i th individual
assigned to carriers in system ‘‘2’’ in a consecutive manner and in (Xi) according to their positions in the mutated individual (Vi).
the same order they appear in system ‘‘1’’. This method is simple Algorithm 5 gives the pseudo-code responsible for producing the
and always guarantee producing feasible solutions. Moreover, offspring individual mi in PPDE algorithm.
since each individual is represented by an array of size N (number
of carrier), this method saves computational resources since N is Algorithm 5. A pseudo-code for crossover operator in PPDE
usually much smaller than M [9]. The details of the PDE approach method.
and its operators are described below.
Set mi ¼ xi ;
Representation: Each individual is represented by an array of
for each carrier then
size N (number of carriers) as shown in Fig. 6 where the value of 
 Let ki ¼ current priority for the carrier if offspring mi ;
kth gene of i th individual specifies the priority associated with 

kth carrier in system ‘‘2’’.  Let kj ¼ current priority for the carrier in mutated vi ;

 if randð0,1Þ oCR then


C21 C22 C23 C24   Let k~j is another priority in mi such that k~j ¼ kj ;


  Swap the places of k~j and ki in mi ;

0.5 0.25 0.75 1.0 
 end
Fig. 6. Representation for PDE’s carrier’s priorities. end
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A.A. Salman et al. / Computers & Operations Research 37 (2010) 2152–2163 2157

C21 C22 C23 C24

S11 S12 S13 S14 S15 S15

C21 20 20 40 0 25 25
2 1 3 4

C22 100 40 30 15 110 *

Fig. 7. Representation for PPDE’s solution.

C23 30 20 45 0 15 35

4.4. Heuristic-based DE C24 90 30 25 10 100 *

In this method, DE priority version as introduced in Section 4.2 Fig. 8. Total interference cost of each carrier using interference matrix in Fig. 3.
is used to rearrange the carriers, however, the segments from
system ‘‘1’’ are assigned to each carrier using one of the following
heuristics:
S11 S12 S13 S14 S15 S15
1. First heuristic (DEH1): From the available consecutive segments
C21 20 20 40 0 25 25
in system ‘‘1’’ (i.e. not been assigned yet), select the ones which
produce the lowest largest interference with current carrier in C22 50 30 30 15 55 *
system ‘‘2’’.
2. Second heuristic (DEH2): From the available consecutive C23 30 20 45 0 15 35
segments in system ‘‘1’’, select the ones which produce the
lowest total interference with current carrier in system ‘‘2’’. C24 45 25 25 10 50 *
3. Third heuristic (DEH3): From the available consecutive seg-
ments in system ‘‘1’’, select the ones which produce both the Fig. 9. The largest cost interference of each carrier using the matrix interference in
lowest largest interference and the lowest total interference Fig. 3.

with current carrier in system ‘‘2’’ (i.e. this calculated by giving

a weight for each objective (i.e. total, largest)).
For these heuristics, two new matrices can be generated from
the main interference matrix (i.e. Fig. 3) namely, the total
interference cost matrix, and the largest interference cost matrix.
For example, using the interference matrix shown in Fig. 3, the
total and largest interference matrices can be generated as given
in Figs. 8 and 9, respectively. Note that the consecutive segments
according to the carrier’s length are also included in this
calculation.
Due to carriers order and the heuristic method used when
assigning segments, some carriers may not find a free consecutive
segments equal to their length. This mean the population
individuals of DEH1, DEH2 and DEH3 always satisfy constraints
C2 and C3 but not necessary satisfy C1. Thus the rule of DE is to
rearrange the carriers in a proper way to produce feasible
solutions. Our Heuristic-based DE algorithms use the same
representation, initialization, mutation, and crossover operators
as described in Section 4.2.
5. Experimental results
All proposed algorithms were implemented using Microsoft
Visual C++ and run on a 1.6 GHz Pentium 4 PC under Windows
environment. In the implementation, two types of parameters
were tuned, in particular, the control parameters of DE and the
weighting coefficients in the objective function. For comparison, a
total of eight benchmarks were used and their specifications are
listed in Table 1. These are the same benchmarks that were used
in [12,13] where benchmarks 1–2, 3–5, and 6–8 were taken from
[6,7,9,10], respectively.
5.1. Control parameters
As has been shown in Section 3, key control parameters in DE
are: (1) population size s, (2) reproduction probability (CR), and
(3) the scaling factor F [27]. It has been reported in literature
that the performance of DE is sensitive to the choices of
these parameters [14]. Fortunately, practical advices have been
suggested for selecting the proper values for these parameters
such as setting s to 5 or 10 times the number of elements
in a vector (i.e. 5 or 10  Nd), F in the range 0.4 to 1.0, and CR ¼0.9
or 1 [27].
In our implementation, the population size ‘‘s’’ was set to
10  Nd when Nd equal to the number of carrier N, and 5  Nd
otherwise. The reason for adapting such policy is that the number
of segments (i.e. M) is usually too large, thus, setting s to be 10
times Nd will consume a large amount of CPU time and resources.
On the other hand, the number of carriers (i.e. N) is normally very
small, hence setting ‘‘s’’ to be 5 times Nd will retard the
exploration progress. As for the parameters F and CR, we have
found that our algorithms performed better for F ¼0.2 and
CR ¼0.9.
In addition to the three control parameters discussed pre-
viously, we have three additional parameters that are needed to
tune the objective function. These parameters are: weighting
coefficient for constraints violation (WH), weighting coefficient
for first fitness objective (W1), and weighting coefficient for the
second fitness objective (W2). Since the creation of feasible
frequencies assignment is not guaranteed in the initial popula-
tions or through evolutionary process, then the objective function
plays the role of discarding such solutions. Therefore, in order to
strongly discourage infeasible solutions, infeasibility should be
considerably penalized within the objective function. In addition,
depending on the necessities of the satellite system designer, the
scaling factor for the first fitness objective (i.e. largest inter-
ference) must be large to obtain solutions with low largest
interference, or it can be made smaller in order to obtain solutions
with low total interference. Thus, to direct the search toward
minimum largest interference, W1 should be set to a large value
whereas W2 must be set to a small value to ensure that the effect
of largest interference is more than that of the effect of total
interference. The values must be switched in case of minimizing
total interference. The experimental evaluation for our proposed
algorithms was performed for two different objectives: one with
the aim of producing solution with minimum largest interference
and another with the objective of producing solution with
minimum total interference. In those experiments, the weighting
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Table 1
Specifications of the FAP instances.

Instance # Carriers N # Segments M Range of carrier length Range of interference

BM1 4 6 1–2 5–55

BM2 4 6 1–2 1–9
BM3 10 32 1–8 1–10
BM4 10 32 1–8 1–100
BM5 10 32 1–8 1–1000
BM6 18 60 1–10 1–100
BM7 30 100 1–10 1–100
BM8 15 50 1–8 1–1000

Table 2
Comparison of the results obtained by proposed methods (best/average/standard deviation).

Benchmarks DEH1 DEH2 DEH3 DEPL PDE PPDE

BM1 Largest 30/30/0 30/30/0 30/30/0 30/30.0/0.0 30/30.0/0.0 30/30/0

Total 100/101/0.7 100/100/0 100/100/0 100/100.00/0.00 100/103.6/2.24 100/100/0
BM2 Largest 4/4/0 4/4/0 4/4/0 4/4/0.00 4/4/0.00 4/4/0
Total 13/13/0.0 13/13.04/0.28 13/13/0.0 13/13/0.00 13/14.40/1.10 13/13/0
BM3 Largest 7/7/0 7/7/0 7/7/0 7/7.50/0.50 7/7/0.00 7/7/0
Total 85/85.12/0.59 86/86/0 85/85/0 85/97.02/6.95 91/115/9.33 86/89.8/2.94
BM4 Largest 64/64/0 73/77.34/3.4 64/64/0 64/73.22/6.54 64/65.50/1.95 64/65.84/1.92
Total 880/881.04/7.28 961/897.2/55.24 880/880/0 935/952.1/63.03 888/1024.4/79.63 889/995.8/69.75
BM5 Largest 640/640.42/2.94 674/674/0 640/640/0 640/686.88/51.17 640/649.58/14.38 640/667.22/17.30
Total 8693/8701.96/57.41 7243/7267.3/82.47 8693/8697.6/8.11 8693/9055.6/1095.9 8835/10338.9/992.3 8835/9029.9/1198.9
BM6 Largest 33/33.68/1.29 33/35.76/3.08 32/32.04/0.2 34/40.84/3.11 36/39.52/1.36 35/39.66/1.23
Total 1011/1026.7/24.89 1013/1009.98/18.65 981/1067.54/43.69 1176/1131.34/57.32 1130/1321.62/96.83 1102/1216.5/91.43
BM7 Largest 61/64.4/6.27 66/73.98/1.50 61/69.2/8.35 96/98.50/1.34 81/86.94/1.42 85/87.78/1.27
Total 2811/2971.78/139.3 2565/2468.8/43.7 2931/3230.1/181.2 4636/4952.3/220.12 4400/4498.4/275.1 4358/4469.9/258.96
BM8 Largest 620/625.24/14.78 620/725.42/24.88 620/620.28/1.37 627/750.84/50.58 620/695.62/30.51 661/703.4/31.4
Total 12 653/12 919.2/784 12 653/12 795.8/853.6 12 653/12 849.4/508.2 14 735/15 680.8/1305.9 12 653/17 119.7/1701.7 16 064/17 192/1549.1

coefficient for problem’s constraints was set to 1  106 while the
weighting coefficients W 1 and W 2 were set to 50.0 and 0.01,
respectively, when the objective was to obtain solution with low
largest interference. In the case when the objective was to obtain
low total interference solution, W1 and W2 were set to 0.5 and
5.0, respectively.
for benchmarks BM4 and BM5 using 50 runs. In the figure, the
vertical axis represents the function value and the horizontal axis
represents the number of generations needed. It can be seen from
the figure that the fastest time to converge is achieved by DEH1
and DEH3 whereas DEPL requires larger time to converge when
compared to other algorithms.

5.2. Experimental set 1 5.2.1. Comparison with other techniques

The initial population was generated for each algorithm as has
been indicated in Section 3. We run each of our algorithms 50
times for each instance with maximum number of generations set
to 1500. Table 2 reports a representative set of results when
applying the different proposed methods on benchmarks BM1–
BM8. The rows of the tables specifies the methods used whereas
the columns give the best/average/standard deviation values of
the largest and total interference for each of the benchmarks (the
best total interference is recorded when the best largest
interference is found).
From the table, it can be seen that all proposed algorithms
reached the same best value in term of largest interference in
BM1–BM5 (except for DEH2 in BM4 and BM5). For BM6, the best
solution for both, the largest and total interference (which were
32 and 981) was achieved by DEH3. For BM7 benchmark, Table 2
shows that the best largest interference was 61 and it is achieved
by methods DEH1 and DEH3. As for BM8, all proposed algorithms
(except DEPL and PPDE) obtained the same solution, 620 for
largest interference and 12 653 for total interference. The best
solution found by DEPL is very close to best solution found by
other algorithms (i.e. DEPL reached to 627), however, the best
largest interference for DEPL is significantly worst.
Fig. 10 shows the average number of generations needed by
each of proposed algorithms to reach its best largest interference
In this section we compare our approaches with other existing
techniques. In our comparison, we will base our comparison on
four performance metrics, namely, best largest interference, best
total interference with their corresponding average/standard
deviation, the convergence rate (i.e. the ratio at which the
algorithm finds a feasible solution), and the average computa-
tional time (measured in seconds) needed to reach the best
solution.
Table 3 shows results obtained by GNN [9], HopSA [10], and
NCNN-VT [13] as reported in [13]. Table 3 shows both the best
and the average calculated values of both the largest and total
interference for GNN algorithm, best value of both the largest and
total interference (not including average), and both the best and
the average calculated values of both the largest and total
interference (average over 1000 runs) for NCNN-VT algorithm.
Table 4 compares our proposed algorithms to HopSA [10] and
NCNN-VT [13] algorithms in term of the average computational
time needed to reached the best solution. Take into consideration
that, the simulation for GNN [9], HopSA [10], and NCNN-VT [13],
was conducted on a 16-node dual Xeon 3.06-GHz (Intel IA32)
Linux cluster with a parallel C/C++ compiler and a toolkit NPACI
ROCKS v3.0 [13].
As shown in Tables 2–4, we can conclude that all algorithms
reached the same best largest interference for BM1–BM5 (except for
DEH2 in BM4 and BM5), with convergence rate of 100%. However,
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they are all competitive in terms of the averaged recorded best largest
interference, computational time, and the best and averaged total
interference. In BM1–BM5 we can see that generally DEH1 and DEH3
outperformed all other algorithms with averages very close to optimal
solutions and with the lowest computational time among all.
However, none of our proposed algorithms reached the best total
interference achieved by NCNN-VT in BM5, except for DEH2 which
achieved better total interference but with higher largest interference.
BM6 and BM8 demonstrate clearly the effectiveness and robustness
of our proposed algorithms, by achieving better solutions in terms of
best largest interference and total interference with very low
computational time (except for DEPL). New best solutions found by
DEH3 algorithm for BM6 and BM8 are shown in Figs. 11 and 12,
respectively, where a black square stands for assigning the carrier to
the corresponding segment, while the white square stands for no
assignment. For BM7; DEH1 and DEH3 achieved the same best largest
interference as reported by NCNN-VT. Even thought NCNN-VT
obtained same instances which has better total interference, on
average, DEH1 and DEH3 outperform it with much less
computational time. It is clear that all our proposed algorithms in
this paper reached better or at least the same performance obtained
by HopSA and GNN.
5.2.2. Pair-wise and Global comparison
Fig. 13 shows a pair-wise and a global comparison among all
algorithms summarized from Tables 2 and 3. The comparison has
been performed by observing the number of times the average of
best largest interference for each algorithm was better, worse or
the same compared to the average of every other algorithm for all 8
benchmarks. Each box in Fig. 13 compares the algorithm in the left
side to the algorithm on the top, where ‘‘4 ’’ , ‘‘o ’’ and ‘‘¼’’ signs
indicate the number of times the average of the algorithm on the
left was better, worse or the same, respectively, compared to the
algorithms listed on the top. For example, the average of DEH1
algorithm was better than the average of DEH2 in five benchmarks,
same in three benchmarks and worse in zero benchmarks. For the
global comparison, an extra box labeled (‘‘All’’) is used. The
numbers in this box indicate the performance of each algorithm
in left side comparing to all other algorithms combined. So based
on results shown in box ‘‘All’’, we can rank the algorithms in an
increasing order of best solutions obtained as: DEH3, DEH1, PDE,
DEH2 and PPDE, NCNN-VT, HopSA, DEPL, and GNN.

5.2.3. Detailed comparison between the best techniques

Fig. 10. Comparison between the best largest interference (averages) found by
each proposed method for BM4 and BM6.
In this sub-section we provide a detailed comparison between
DEH1, DEH3 and NCNN-VT methods. Table 5 summarizes results
for these three algorithms, where results for NCNN-VT are taken
from [13]. The table includes the best largest interference, the
percentage of reaching optimum (Opt rate), and the average
deviation from the optimum.
In Table 5, DEH1 achieved at least a 44% opt rate, DEH3
achieved at least a 16% opt rate, while NCNN-VT achieved at least
a 10.4% opt rate. Looking at the average error, we can find that the
proposed algorithms (i.e. DEH1 and DEH3) achieved an average
error much smaller than NCNN-VT. This become more significant
in BM8, where the average error of NCNN-VT reached to 182,
while the worst average error in our algorithms was not more
than 5.24. Note that NCNN-VT failed to reach to the best solution
found by DEH1 and DEH3 in BM8 (and BM6).
In short, Tables 2–5 demonstrate that the proposed algorithms
presented in this paper are very reliable by achieving better
solutions (i.e. minimum largest interference) for all benchmarks

Table 3
Performance of GNN [9], HopSA [10] and NCNN-VT [13] methods on eight instances (from [13]).

Instance GNN [9] HopSA [10] NCNN-VT [13]

Largest Best/Ave Total Best/ave Largest Total Largest Best/Ave/SD Total Best/ave/SD

BM1 30/31.5 100/100.8 30 100 30/30/0 100/100/0

BM2 4/4.9 13/15.4 4 13 4/4/0 13/13.7/1.2
BM3 7/8.1 85/99.4 7 85 7/7/0 85/89.9/3.8
BM4 64/77.1 880/982.0 64 888 64/65.7/2.6 880/903.6/35.1
BM5 640/766.8 8693/9413.9 817 6910 640/677/71.1 7246/8445/656.7
BM6 49 1218 45 1080 35/39.8/4.8 1000/1068/40.5
BM7 100 4633 98 3396 61/79.9/7.8 2779/2995/124
BM8 919 16 192 741 13 178 695/877/64.8 15 373/18 034/318
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Table 4
Computational time (measured in seconds) comparison between all methods.

Method Time (s)

BM1 BM2 BM3 BM4 BM5 BM6 BM7 BM8

Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD)

DEH1 0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) 0.16 (0.15) 0.09 (0.05) 0.26 (0.26) 3.71 (1.56) 58.40 (25.63) 1.26 (0.84)
DEH2 0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) 0.03 (0.02) 0.11 (0.08) 0.06 (0.15) 4.22 (1.73) 43.18 (13.91) 1.69 (1.17)
DEH3 0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) 0.28 (0.25) 0.17 (0.10) 0.64 (0.56) 12.03 (4.89) 69.64 (44.41) 4.62 (2.08)
DEPL 2 (1.73) 2.38 (2.05) 222.8 (118.94) 224.98 (132.93) 237.3 (113.99) 1076.76 (204.42) 809.17 (264.84) 759.24 (231.15)
PDE 0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) 0.18 (0.12) 0.62 (0.39) 0.71 (0.49) 5.75 (3.39) 18.42 (12.61) 3.40 (2.04)
PPDE 0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) 1.36 (0.83) 1.48 (0.69) 1.84 (1.24) 15.55 (8.08) 25.58 (16.75) 7.68 (2.10)

GNN [9] Not available

HopSA [10] 1.0 (0.0) 1.0 (0.0) 33.0 (0.0) 33.8 (0.8) 33.0 (0.5) 1529 (156) 2845 (528) 3738 (615)
NCNN-VT [13] 0.02 (0.0) 0.02 (0.0) 0.31 (0.04) 0.36 (0.05) 0.37 (0.04) 11.8 (0.6) 78.3 (13.3) 143.2 (12.5)

Segments
1 60
Carrier

18

Fig. 11. Best solution obtained by DEH3 for instance BM 6, with largest interference ¼ 32, total interference ¼ 981.

Segments

Carrier 1 50

15

Fig. 12. Best solution obtained by DEH3 for instance BM 8, with largest interference ¼620, total interference ¼ 12 653.

tested, excellent rate of reaching the optimum solutions, as well
as, they are very fast (excluding DEPL) compared to other.
5.3. Experimental set 2
The second set of experiments has been conducted with the
aim to produce solutions with minimum total interference.
Therefore, W 1 was set to 0.5 and W 2 was set to 5.0. The initial
population was generated for each algorithm as has been
described in Section 4. Each proposed algorithm was run 30
times for each problem instance with maximum number of
generations set to 1500. Since almost all literature investigation
concentrates on achieving minimum largest interference not
minimum total interference, hence no literature results does exit
for comparison.
Tables 6 and 7 list the results of the conducted experiments.
Table 6 lists a representative set of results (best/average/standard
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A.A. Salman et al. / Computers & Operations Research 37 (2010) 2152–2163 2161

DEH2 DEH3 DEPL PDE PP DE GNN HopSA NCNN-VT ALL

>5 >1 >6 >5 >5 >8 >4 >5 >39

DEH 1 =3 =4 =2 =3 =3 =0 =4 =3 =22
<0 <3 <0 <0 <0 <0 <0 <0 <3

>0 >5 >2 >2 >7 >4 >4 >24

DEH2 =3 =2 =3 =3 =0 =3 =3 =20
<5 <1 <3 <3 <1 <1 <1 <20

>6 >5 >5 >8 >4 >5 >41

DEH3 =2 =3 =3 =0 =4 =3 =22
<0 <0 <0 <0 <0 <0 <1

>0 >0 >8 >2 >1 >12

DEPL =2 =2 =0 =2 =2 =14
<6 <6 <0 <4 <5 <38

>5 >8 >4 >4 >30

PDE =3 =0 =3 =3 =20
<0 <0 <1 <1 <14

>8 >4 >3 >24

PP DE =0 =3 =3 =20
<0 <1 <2 <20

>1 >0 >2

GNN =0 =0 =0
<7 <8 <62

>2 >16
HopSA =3 =22
<3 <26

>20
NCNN-VT =20
<24

Fig. 13. A Global comparison of FAP algorithms averaging over 50 runs: ‘‘ 4’’ , ‘‘¼’’, ‘‘o ’’ refers to better, same, worse than in n times.

Table 5
Comparison between NCNN-VT [13] and DEH1, DEH3.

Instance NCNN-VT DEH1 DEH3

Largest interference Total Largest interference Total Largest interference Total

interference interference interference
Best Opt rate Average Best Opt rate Average Best Opt rate Average
(%) error (%) error (%) error

BM1 30 100 0 100 30 100 0 100 30 100 0 100

BM2 4 100 0 13 4 100 0 13 4 100 0 13
BM3 7 100 0 85 7 100 0 85 7 100 0 85
BM4 64 88.3 1.74 880 64 100 0 880 64 100 0 880
BM5 640 37.1 37.3 7246 640 98 0.42 8693 640 100 0 8693
BM6 35 25.8 4.78 1000 33 58 0.68 1011 32 96 0.04 981
BM7 61 10.4 18.1 2779 61 44 3.4 2811 61 16 4.2 2931
BM8 695 26.6 182 15 373 620 84 5.24 12 653 620 96 0.28 12 653

deviation for minimum largest and total interference) when the
proposed algorithms were applied to benchmarks BM1–BM8 and
Table 7 compares the proposed algorithms in terms of their
average computational time.
rom Tables 6 and 7, it can be seen that all proposed algorithms
reached the same lowest total interference for BM1 and BM2.
However, for BM4–BM8, DEH1 algorithm which was able to find
the best solutions in first set of experiments, failed to find the best
solution in this experiment . This due to the fact that the heuristic
embedded within DEH1 always looks for the minimum largest
interference regardless of the total interference. Moreover, DEH2
algorithm obtained the best total interference in all benchmarks
(except in BM3) with the shortest time and with an excellent rate
of achieving the optimum solution. Further, DEH3 was able to
achieve comparable results in this experiment as in the previous
experiment (when minimum largest interference was the main
objective) demonstrating its effectiveness in either case. DEPL,
PDE and PPDE algorithms found the optimal total interference in
BM1–BM5, however, their performance differs for BM6–BM8. The
longest computational time recorded for all benchmarks was
when running DEPL algorithm which we believe is caused by the
representation used in the algorithm (i.e. Nd ¼M).
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Table 6
Comparison between proposed methods for experiment set 2 (best/average/standard deviation).

Benchmarks DEH1 DEH2 DEH3 DEPL PDE PPDE

BM1 Total 100/100/0 100/100.17/0.90 100/100/0 100/100/0 100/100.00/0.00 100/100/0

Largest 30/30/0 30/30/0 30/300/0 30/30/0 30/30.00/0.00 30/30/0
BM2 Total 13/13/0 13/13/0 13/13/0 13/13/0 13/13.00/0.00 13/13/0
Largest 4/4/0 4/4/0 4/4/0 4/4/0 4/4.00/0.00 4/4/0
BM3 Total 85/85.67/1.37 86/86/0 85/85/0 85/92.87/4.90 86/89.27/2.14 86/87.4/2.30
Largest 7/7/0 7/7/0 7/7/0 7/7.90/0.75 7/7.47/0.76 7/7.13/0.43
BM4 Total 866/874.27/8.06 821/822.10/5.92 821/821/0 821/891.57/29.26 821/863.27/16.68 821/853.33/22.12
Largest 67/67.3/5.42 99/98.37/3.41 99/99/0 99/90.20/8.17 99/85.30/10.27 99/88.37/9.84
BM5 Total 7205/7234.133/77.61 6910/6913.57/19.21 6910/6910/0 6910/7413.93/397.89 6910/7029.43/109.62 6910/6962.6/68.39
Largest 725/725/0 817/817/0 817/817/0 817/848.83/102.16 817/817.00/0.00 817/817/0
BM6 Total 968/977.47/12.03 923/946.13/16.11 923/937.03/13.15 962/1043.93/44.19 974/1022.17/24.68 933/971.53/20.12
Largest 49/45.67/3.33 46/45.37/2.76 46/45.57/1.17 45/46.93/2.13 48/47.13/1.80 45/46.53/2.69
BM7 Total 2559/2700.3/130.5 2409/2447.4/16.1 2501/2628.03/103.8 4513/4838.6/166.96 2779/3430.2/328.3 3185/3418.4/114.98
Largest 81/81.9/6.81 80/83.13/7.48 74/87.57/7.06 100/99.39/1.01 81/95.40/5.52 95/96.33/3.46
BM8 Total 11 800/12 203.5/391.7 11 182/11 365.5/275.2 11 182/11 390.3/120.9 12 143/13 555.8/733.1 11 294/12 348.7/647.3 11 294/11 913.5/442.5
Largest 727/758.5/86.92 938/877.97/96.80 938/844.33/92.80 727/923.2/60.31 938/845.30/95.55 938/865.07/101.09

Table 7
Computational time comparison.

Method Time (s)

BM1 BM2 BM3 BM4 BM5 BM6 BM7 BM8

Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD)

DEH1 0.00(0.00) 0.00(0.00) 0.37(0.45) 0.20(0.28) 0.24(0.31) 3.7(1.57) 49.75(22.73) 1.51(1.03)

DEH2 0.00(0.00) 0.00(0.00) 0.04(0.02) 0.11(0.06) 0.05(0.02) 3.69(1.26) 35.47(10.48) 1.27(1.08)
DEH3 0.00(0.00) 0.00(0.00) 0.76(0.36) 0.85(0.57) 0.71(0.38) 13.98(4.08) 44.81(20.31) 4.26(2.12)
DEPL 0.00(0.00) 0.00(0.00) 2.24(1.36) 2.00(0.98) 1.99(0.84) 45.06(10.57) 154.04(45.49) 17.85(7.04)
PDE 0.00(0.00) 0.00(0.00) 0.61(0.38) 0.59(0.38) 0.36(0.23) 5.93(2.00) 43.43(32.59) 1.55(0.45)
PPDE 0.00(0.00) 0.00(0.00) 0.76(0.36) 0.85(0.57) 0.71(0.38) 13.98(4.08) 44.81(20.31) 4.26(2.12)

6. Conclusions
In this paper, we have presented a number of novel approaches
to solve the frequency assignment problem in satellite commu-
nication systems. All proposed algorithms in this work are
inspired by Differential Evolution algorithm. Several schemes
such as: adaptive differential evolution which represents FAP
solutions directly, standard DE with appropriate mapping algo-
rithm to present FAP solutions, and hybrid algorithms in which
heuristics are embedded within adaptive or standard differential
evolution have been investigated. The effectiveness and robust-
ness of our proposed algorithms are demonstrated through
solving a set of benchmark problems and comparing results
obtained with other existing methods. Experimental results have
shown that our proposed algorithms in general and hybrid ones in
particular are robust and were able to find comparable and even
better solutions (i.e. for some benchmarks) with low computa-
tional time. Therefore, algorithms based on differential evolution
paradigm provide a viable approach for solving frequency
assignment problem in satellite communication systems.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Prof. L. Wang and his team, at
the School of Electrical Engineering, Nanyang Technological
University, Singapore, for providing us the benchmarks.
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