The majority of real-world problems involve not only finding the optimal solution, but also this solution must satisfy one or more constraints. Differential evolution (DE) algorithm with constraints handling has been proposed to solve one of the most fundamental problems in cellular network design. This proposed method has been applied to solve the radio network planning (RNP) in the forthcoming 5G Long Term Evolution (5G LTE) wireless cellular network, that satisfies both deployment cost and energy savings by reducing the number of deployed micro base stations (BSs) in an area of interest. Practically, this has been implemented using constrained strategy that must guarantee good coverage for the users as well. Three differential evolution variants have been adopted to solve the 5G RNP problem. Experimental results have shown that the constrained DE/best/1/bin has achieved best results over other variants in terms of deployment cost, coverage rate and quality of service (QoS).
