THE COMBINATORIAL ANT SYSTEM

摘要

This paper presents a new distributed algorithm based on Ant System (AS) concepts called Combinatorial Ant System (CAS). It is oriented to solve static discrete-state combinatorial optimization problems. Our approach consists of mapping the solution space of the combinatorial optimization problem in the space where the ants will walk, and defining the transition probability and the pheromone update formula of the Ant System, according to the objective function of the Combinatorial Optimization Problem. We test our approach on the graph partitioning, graph coloring and traveling salesman problems.