Optimal adjusting of simulated annealing parameters

Introduction/purpose: Simulated annealing is a powerful technique widely used in optimization problems. One critical aspect of using simulated annealing effectively is a proper and optimal adjustment of its parameters. This paper presents a novel approach to efficiently adjust the parameters of simulated annealing to enhance its performance and convergence speed. Methods: Since the simulated algorithm is inspired by the cooling Metropolis process, the basic idea is to simulate and analyze this process using a mathematical model. The proposed work tends to properly imitate the Metropolis cooling process in the algorithmic field. By intelligently adjusting the temperature schedule, temperature reduction and cooling rate, the algorithm optimizes the balance between exploration and exploitation, leading to improved convergence and higher-quality solutions. Results: To evaluate the effectiveness of this approach, it was applied first on a chosen sample function to be minimized, and then on some usual known optimization functions. The results demonstrate that our approach, called Optimal Adjusting of Simulated Annealing parameters (OASA), achieves superior performance compared to traditional static parameter settings and other existing approaches, showing how to well adjust the parameters of the simulated annealing algorithm to improve its efficiency in terms of solution quality and processing time. Conclusion: Adjusting the algorithm parameters could have a significant contribution in the optimization field even for other metaheuristics.