A bandwidth sourcing and task allocation model in telecommunications under stochastic QoS guarantees

In this study, we model bandwidth provider selection and task allocation problem as an expected cost minimization problem with stochastic constraints. Two important parameters of quality of service (QoS), namely delay and jitter are considered as random variables to capture stochastic nature of telecom network environment. As solution methodology, stochastic model is converted into its deterministic equivalent and then a novel heuristic algorithm is proposed to solve resulting non-linear mixed integer programming model. We analyze how different prices, quality and task distribution affect the optimal behavior of the firm. Finally, performance of solution procedure is tested by several randomly generated scenarios and by a relaxation of this problem as tight lower bound. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.