Keynote speaker

Silvano Martello  (Bologna, Italy)

Silvano Martello is Professor of Operations Research at the School of Engineering of theUniversity of Bologna. He is interested in discrete mathematics and combinatorial optimization, with an emphasis on algorithms for routing, packing and scheduling problems. He is the author of more than 150 papers mostly published on top international journals. He also published books with co-authors. Among them the best known are “Knapsack Problems: Algorithms and Computer Implementations” (co-author P. Toth; Wiley, 1990) and “Assignment Problems” (co-authors R.E.Burkard and M. Dell’Amico; SIAM, 2009 and 2012).

His scientific activity is also illustrated by the co-edited books Surveys in Combinatorial Optimization (North-Holland, 1987), Annotated Bibliographies in Combinatorial Optimization (Wiley, 1997) and Meta-Heuristics: Advances and Trends in Local Search Paradigms for Optimization (Kluwer, 1999), as well as by 4 volumes of the Annals of Operations Research and 13 special issues of international journals.

He has delivered invited plenary lectures at major conferences all around the world. Some examples are: Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Cuba, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, and USA. In September 2012 he has been IFORS Distinguished Lecturer at the CLAIO/SBPO Conference, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He is Editor-in-Chief of 4OR-A Quarterly Journal of Operations Research and member of the editorial boards of various scientific journals (Computers & Industrial Engineering, Discrete Applied Mathematics, Discrete Optimization, EURO Journal on Computational Optimization, Journal of Heuristics, etc.). He chairs the European Chapter in Combinatorial Optimization (ECCO), an EURO working group with over 1,000 members. He is Senior Fellow of the Center for Management of Operations and Logistics of the University of Texas at Austin.

 

Two-Dimensional Packing Problems in Telecommunications

The talk describes the development a research, conducted within Nokia Siemens Networks, to solve the downlink sub-frame allocation problem in Mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16) technology in its full complexity, while simultaneously fulfilling real-life constraints on processing power and delay.  We informally introduce the problem studied, and we review the main methodological steps that were followed, as a paradigmatic example of how an Operations Research application is developed:

• birth of the industrial problem;
• development of mathematical models;
• theoretical analysis of their computational complexity;
• evaluation of the technological constraints;
• choice and implementation of the solution approaches;
• experimental evaluation on realistic scenarios.

Bibliogaphy

[1] C. Cicconetti, L. Lenzini, A. Lodi, S. Martello, E. Mingozzi, M. Monaci (2010). Efficient two-dimensional data allocation in IEEE 802.16 OFDMA. Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 2010, 2160-2168.

[2] C. Cicconetti, L. Lenzini, A. Lodi, S. Martello, E. Mingozzi, M. Monaci (2011). A Fast and Efficient Algorithm to Exploit Multi-user Diversity in IEEE 802.16 BandAMC. Computer Networks 55, 3680-3693.

[3] A. Lodi, S. Martello, M. Monaci, C. Cicconetti, L. Lenzini, E. Mingozzi, C. Eklund, J. Moilanen (2011). Efficient two-dimensional packing algorithms for mobile WiMAX. Management Science 57, 2130-2144.

[4] C.A.J. Hurkens, A. Lodi, S. Martello, M. Monaci, G.J. Woeginger (2012). Complexity and approximation of an area packing problem. Optimization Letters 6, 1-9.