Simulated annealing ant colony algorithm based on backfire method for QAP

A simulated annealing ant colony algorithm based on backfire method(BASAC) is presented to tackle the quadratic assignment problem (QAP). The simulated annealing algorithm is combined with the ant colony algorithm. The backfire method which has a small temperature attenuation coefficient is used in the temperature control process. After each round of searching, the solution set got by the colony is treated as the candidate set. Base on the simulated annealing method, the solution in the candidate set is chosen to join the update set with possibility which determined by the temperature. The update set is used to update the trail information matrix. And also the current best solution is used to enhance the tail information. The pheromone trails matrix is reset when the algorithm is in the stagnant state. The computer experiments demonstrate this algorithm has high calculation stability and converging speed.