Genetic Algorithm Approach to the Search for Golomb Rulers
Stephen W. Soliday, Abdollah Homaifar, G.L. Lebby · 1995
The success of genetic algorithm in finding relatively good solutions to NP-complete problems such as the traveling salesman problem and job-shop scheduling problem provided a good starting point for a machine intelligent method of finding Golomb Rulers. These rulers have been applied to radio astronomy, X-ray crystallography, circuit layout and geographical mapping. Currently the shortest lengths of the first sixteen rulers are known. The nature of NP-complete makes the search for higher order rulers difficult and very time consuming. While the shortest lengths for each order are important as a mathematical exercise, finding relatively short high order valid rulers has a more important impact on real world applications.