Title :
ACO for continuous function optimization: A performance analysis
Author :
Ojha, Varun Kumar ; Abraham, Ajith ; Snasel, Vaclav
Author_Institution :
IT4Innovations, VrB Tech. Univ. of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic
Abstract :
The performance of the meta-heuristic algorithms often depends on their parameter settings. Appropriate tuning of the underlying parameters can drastically improve the performance of a meta-heuristic. The Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), a population based meta-heuristic algorithm inspired by the foraging behavior of the ants, is no different. Fundamentally, the ACO depends on the construction of new solutions, variable by variable basis using Gaussian sampling of the selected variables from an archive of solutions. A comprehensive performance analysis of the underlying parameters such as: selection strategy, distance measure metric and pheromone evaporation rate of the ACO suggests that the Roulette Wheel Selection strategy enhances the performance of the ACO due to its ability to provide non-uniformity and adequate diversity in the selection of a solution. On the other hand, the Squared Euclidean distance-measure metric offers better performance than other distance-measure metrics. It is observed from the analysis that the ACO is sensitive towards the evaporation rate. Experimental analysis between classical ACO and other meta-heuristic suggested that the performance of the well-tuned ACO surpasses its counterparts.
Keywords :
ant colony optimisation; ACO; Roulette wheel selection strategy; ant colony optimization; ant foraging behavior; continuous function optimization; meta-heuristic algorithm performance improvement; parameter tuning; pheromone evaporation rate; population based meta-heuristic algorithm; selection strategy; squared Euclidean distance measure metric; Silicon; Ant colony optimization; Continuous optimization; Metaheuristic; Performance analysis;
Conference_Titel :
Intelligent Systems Design and Applications (ISDA), 2014 14th International Conference on
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4799-7937-0
DOI :
10.1109/ISDA.2014.7066253