On MAX - MIN Ant System's Parameters

The impact of the values of the most meaningful parameters on the behavior of $\cal M\!AX\!$–$\cal MI\!N\!$ Ant System is analyzed. Namely, we take into account the number of ants, the evaporation rate of the pheromone, and the exponent values of the pheromone trail and of the heuristic measure in the random proportional rule. We propose an analytic approach to examining their impact on the speed of convergence of the algorithm. Some computational experiments are reported to show the practical relevance of the theoretical results.

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