Milano Digital City: Planning the Municipal Wireless Network of Milano

Planning municipal wireless access networks is a challenging task, since many optimization choices must be taken in large metropolitan areas while, in turn, the number of free variables is very large, on the order of several millions. The aim is to optimize the position of wireless access points, as well as their connection to the backbone network. This paper is focused on the "Milano Digital City" project, i.e. the municipal wireless access network of Milano. We formalized the problem of choosing appropriate access points’ locations and connecting the wireless access network to the backbone network. We designed an optimization algorithm, based on a fast heuristic approach, and applied it to a real-world scenario: the 51-km2 city area of Milano (Italy). The proposed heuristic algorithm was extended to support mobility. Results show that the additional cost for supporting user mobility is limited to few percent.