A distributed ant-based algorithm for numerical optimization
Peter Korošec, Jurij Šilc · 2009
This paper presents a new, distributed approach to the numerical optimization problem. The algorithm is based on ant-stigmergy metaheuristics, where indirect coordination between the ants drives the search procedure towards the optimal solution. Indirect coordination offers a high degree of parallelism and therefore a straightforward distributed implementation. For the communication between processes a MPICH2 for Windows library is used. The cost-function evaluation is an important part of the numerical optimization and is usually realized as a black-box simulator. Therefore, an algorithm analysis according to the simulator's time complexity is discussed.