A hybrid ant colony optimization approach for the design of reliable networks

Abstract

This paper presents a new solution approach, which is a hybridization of ant colony optimization (ACO) and simulated annealing (SA), called (h_ACO) to design of communication networks. The design problem is to find the optimal network topology where total cost is minimum and all-terminal reliability is not less-than a given level of reliability. The effectiveness of the h_ACO is investigated comparing its results with those obtained by SA and ACO, which are basic forms of the h_ACO, and also GAs given in the literature for the design problem. Computational results show that the h_ACO is an effective heuristic approach to design of reliable networks.