Presenting a new method based on cooperative PSO to solve permutation problems: A case study of n-queen problem

Nowadays, we are involved with some problems with complex search space and nondeterministic answers. Therefore, methods which are able to find an optimal answer are very important. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is one of these methods. In this paper, we present a new cooperative PSO method to solve permutation problems. In addition to eliminating disadvantages of standard PSO, this method provides parallel searching. In this method, every particle in the swarm is divided into some sub-particles, which make use of standard PSO to update their velocity. If a more optimum point than current position is found, sub-particles are updated. Due to primary studies on n-queen problem, which are presented in experimental results, our proposed method has exceeded standard PSO algorithm and other compared metaheuristic methods.