Rappaport Communications Location Problem

Rappaport Communications provides cellular phone service in several states.

Rappaport wants to expand to provide inter-city service between four cities.

A new communications tower must be built to handle these inter-city calls.

The tower will have a 30 mile transmission radius. City locations are shown
below. Where should the tower be located?

Y
50
Cleveland
x=5, y=45
40

30
Youngstown
Akron x=52, y=21
20 x=12, y=21

10
Canton
x=17, y=5
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 X
Rappaport Communications Model
Variables:
, % = coordinates of the new tower

MIN
−5 + % − 45 +
− 12 + % − 21
+
− 17 + %−5 +
− 52 + % − 21

S.T.
−5 + % − 45 ≤ 30

− 12 + % − 21 ≤ 30

− 17 + %−5 ≤ 30

− 52 + % − 21 ≤ 30

Note: no non-negativity constraints.

Rappaport Communications – Feasible Region

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
-40 -30 -20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
-10

-20

-30

-40
 Lecture 25

Another Example: Portfolio Selection with Risky

Securities

Consider investing in n stocks, knowing the following information

• The current price of each share of stock j is pj

• Our budget for buying the shares is B

• The expected return of each share is µj

• Being risk averse, we want the return to be at least some amount L

• The mutual risk of investment in stocks i and j is σij

We want to decide on the number of shares of each stock j , so as to
minimize the total risk of the investment. Formulate the problem as NLP.

Operations Research Methods 2