Multi-Keyword Ranked Search on Encrypted Cloud Data Based on Snow Ablation Optimizer
Huiyan Chen, Shuncong Tan, Xing Ma, Xi Lin, Yunfei Yao · Symmetry · 2025
The idea of multi-keyword ranked search over encrypted cloud data has attracted considerable attention in recent studies, as it allows users to securely and efficiently retrieve highly relevant results. Traditional methods improve search efficiency by incorporating the K-means clustering algorithm. However, when applied to large-scale datasets, K-means can become computationally expensive. This paper introduces a multi-keyword ranked search method, SAO-KRS, which leverages the snow ablation optimizer (SAO) to enhance clustering performance. The approach begins with principal component analysis (PCA) to reduce the dimensionality of high-dimensional data, followed by clustering the reduced data using SAO, which reduces clustering overhead massively. By incorporating a heuristic best-first search algorithm over index trees, the scheme achieves reduced computational cost with high retrieval accuracy. In the best-case scenario, the proposed method achieves up to 21 times faster clustering and 2.7 times faster searching compared to the traditional K-means approach. Extensive experimental results verify that this method significantly improves clustering efficiency while ensuring both search speed and accuracy.