A novel computational intelligence approach for multiple-point routing in communication networks

A new evolutionary algorithm for the constrained multiple destination routing problem is presented. The constrained multicast problem is characterized by a minimum cost multicast tree and a bounded end-to-end delay. It has been proven that this problem is NP-complete. The proposed algorithm is based on a soft computing technique that integrates in an efficient manner the merits of genetic algorithms and concepts of the competitive learning in the artificial neural networks literature. A population based learning algorithm is utilized, among other techniques, to construct a delay bounded multicast tree. A salient feature of the algorithm is the adaptive learning concept that achieves an efficient trade-off between the exploration and exploitation of the search space.