Time-Scattered Heuristic for the Hardware Implementation of Population-Based ACO

We present a new kind of heuristic guidance as an extension to the Population-based Ant Colony Optimization (P-ACO) implemented in hardware on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The heuristic information is obtained by transforming standard heuristic information into small time-scattered heuristic-vectors of favourable ant decisions. This approach is suited for heuristics which allow for an a priori calculation of the heuristics information. Using the proposed method, an ant can build-up a solution in quasi-linear time. Experimental studies measure the performance of the time-scattered heuristic. A comparison with the standard heuristic and candidate lists is also given.

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