Analyzing the impact of ant colony optimization parameters for path searching behavior

Ant-inspired metaheuristic algorithms, such as Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), are dependable for addressing intricate problems in discrete and continuous domains. This study examines the influence of the pheromone significance factor (α), heuristic importance factor (β), and pheromone decay rate (ρ) on the effectiveness of ACO for path-searching. We analyze the algorithm's convergence rate and effectiveness in identifying the shortest path by simulating various parameter configurations on a standard graph. The value α= ۲ was chosen based on prior research on the behavior of real ants. Our simulations demonstrated that α= ۲ is a superior choice to α= ۱, which the naïve approach would recommend. The experiments demonstrated that setting β to ۱ and ρ to ۱۰% resulted in the optimal convergence speed and the minor average path lengths. Also, by examining the effect of the number of ants on the convergence of the simulation, it was found that the selection of more ants shows more paths. Using more ants for the initial stop leads to a marginal decrease in the average path length.

کلیدواژه ها:

ant colony optimization ، ACO ، Path-Searching ، Metaheuristics ، Parameter tuning ، Discrete Optimization ، Convergence analysis