Overview

This chapter explores the fundamental principles involved in making decisions that will change the way a system operates. Such decisions are essential to the process of improving or optimizing code division multiple access (CDMA) cellular networks.

There are some general business and engineering guidelines for making decisions that are useful in cases where we cannot create a mathematical model of the system we want to improve. We can think of these as nonquantified decisions.

If we are able to build a mathematical model of the system, then we can optimize the model and use the results to guide our design and upgrade of real-world systems. The principles used in making general business and engineering decisions also apply to the design of mathematical models, but the optimization models also have more stringent requirements. Mathematicians also have a unique skill at picturing systems in ways that might appear counterintuitive but which make problems easier to solve.

In the first section of this chapter we will look at some business and engineering tools that help us define problems and improve systems as we plan them or modify them. The business models are important because, more and more, engineers are expected to be able to present business cases, express value in business terms, and commit to business requirements and goals.

The engineering tools are valuable because organizations such as the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) have developed approaches that can...