An Analysis of Different Variations of Ant Colony Optimization to the Minimum Weight Vertex Cover Problem

摘要

Ant colony optimization (AGO) has previously been applied to the Minimum Weight Vertex Cover Problem with very good results. The performance of the ACO algorithm can be improved with the use of different variations of the basic Ant Colony System algorithm, like the use of Elitism, Rank based approach and the MinMax system. In this paper, we have made an analysis of effectiveness of these variations applied to the Minimum Weight Vertex Covering Problem for different problem cases. This analysis is done by the observation of several properties of acquired solutions by these algorithms like best found solution, average solution quality, dispersion and distribution of solutions.