Using the Bees Algorithm to Assign Terminals to Concentrators

With the recent growth of communication networks, a large variety of combinatorial optimization problems appeared. One of these problems is the Terminal Assignment Problem. The main objective is to assign a given set of terminals to a given set of concentrators. In this paper, we propose the Bees Algorithm to assign terminals to concentrators. The algorithm performs a kind of neighbourhood search and uses a local search method to locate the global minimum. The Bees Algorithm is a swam-based optimization algorithm that mimics the natural behaviour of honey bees. We show that the Bees Algorithm is able to achieve feasible solutions to Terminal Assignment instances, improving the results obtained by previous approaches.