An Improved Model of Ant Colony Optimization Using a Novel Pheromone Update Strategy

The paper introduces a novel pheromone update strategy to improve the functionality of ant colony optimization algorithms. This modification tries to extend the search area by an optimistic reinforcement strategy in which not only the most desirable sub-solution is reinforced in each step, but some of the other partial solutions with acceptable levels of optimality are also favored. therefore, it improves the desire for the other potential solutions to be selected by the following artificial ants towards a more exhaustive algorithm by increasing the overall exploration. The modifications can be adopted in all ant-based optimization algorithms; however, this paper focuses on two static problems of travelling salesman problem and classification rule mining. To work on these challenging problems we considered two ACO algorithms of ACS (Ant Colony System) and AntMiner 3.0 and modified their pheromone update strategy. As shown by simulation experiments, the novel pheromone update method can improve the behavior of both algorithms regarding almost all the performance evaluation metrics. key words: Ant colony optimization, ant colony system, ant-miner, classification rule mining, learning automata, reinforcement learning