A Modified Ant Colony Algorithm for Multi-constraint Multicast Routing

This paper proposes a modified ant colony algorithm and applies it to multi-constraint multicast routing problem. This modified algorithm adds the orientation factor to the basic ant colony algorithm, which enables the ant to get rid of the initial blindness when searching paths. This makes use of the search results and reduces the misguiding function of pheromone on irrelevant paths, thus overcoming the drawbacks of slow convergence existing in the basic ant colony algorithm. The simulation results show that the accuracy and convergence speed of the modified algorithm are better than those of the basic ant colony algorithm.