A Deterministic Model for Analyzing the Dynamics of Ant System Algorithm and Performance Amelioration through a New Pheromone Deposition Approach

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a metaheuristic for solving difficult discrete optimization problems. This paper presents a deterministic model based on differential equation to analyze the dynamics of basic Ant System algorithm. Traditionally, the deposition of pheromone on different parts of the tour of a particular ant is always kept unvarying. Thus the pheromone concentration remains uniform throughout the entire path of an ant. This article introduces an exponentially increasing pheromone deposition approach by artificial ants to improve the performance of basic Ant System algorithm. The idea here is to introduce an additional attracting force to guide the ants towards destination more easily by constructing an artificial potential field identified by increasing pheromone concentration towards the goal. Apart from carrying out analysis of Ant System dynamics with both traditional and the newly proposed deposition rules, the paper presents an exhaustive set of experiments performed to find out suitable parameter ranges for best performance of Ant System with the proposed deposition approach. Simulations reveal that the proposed deposition rule outperforms the traditional one by a large extent both in terms of solution quality and algorithm convergence. Thus, the contributions of the article can be presented as follows: i) it introduces differential equation and explores a novel method of analyzing the dynamics of ant system algorithms, ii) it initiates an exponentially increasing pheromone deposition approach by artificial ants to improve the performance of algorithm in terms of solution quality and convergence time, iii) exhaustive experimentation performed facilitates the discovery of an algebraic relationship between the parameter set of the algorithm and feature of the problem environment.Comment: 4th IEEE International Conference on Information and Automation for Sustainability, 200

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©2001 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.Digital libraries and other large archives of electronically retrievable and manipulable material are becoming widespread in both commercial and scientific arenas. Advances in networking technologies have led to a greater proliferation of wide-area distributed data warehousing with associated data management challenges. We review tools and technologies for supporting distributed on-line data archives and explain our key concept of active data archives, in which data can be, processed on-demand before delivery. We are developing wide-area data warehousing software infrastructure for geographically distributed archives of large scientific data sets, such as satellite image data, that are stored hierarchically on disk arrays and tape silos and are accessed by a variety of scientific and decision support applications. Interoperability is a major issue for distributed data archives and requires standards for server interfaces and metadata. We review present activities and our contributions in developing such standards for different application areas.K. Hawick, P. Coddington, H. James, C. Patte

Optimal Communication Structures for Concurrent Computing

This research focuses on communicative solvers that run concurrently and exchange information to improve performance. This “team of solvers” enables individual algorithms to communicate information regarding their progress and intermediate solutions, and allows them to synchronize memory structures with more “successful” counterparts. The result is that fewer nodes spend computational resources on “struggling” processes. The research is focused on optimization of communication structures that maximize algorithmic efficiency using the theoretical framework of Markov chains. Existing research addressing communication between the cooperative solvers on parallel systems lacks generality: Most studies consider a limited number of communication topologies and strategies, while the evaluation of different configurations is mostly limited to empirical testing. Currently, there is no theoretical framework for tuning communication between cooperative solvers to match the underlying hardware and software. Our goal is to provide such functionality by mapping solvers’ dynamics to Markov processes, and formulating the automatic tuning of communication as a well-defined optimization problem with an objective to maximize solvers’ performance metrics

Operations Management

Global competition has caused fundamental changes in the competitive environment of the manufacturing and service industries. Firms should develop strategic objectives that, upon achievement, result in a competitive advantage in the market place. The forces of globalization on one hand and rapidly growing marketing opportunities overseas, especially in emerging economies on the other, have led to the expansion of operations on a global scale. The book aims to cover the main topics characterizing operations management including both strategic issues and practical applications. A global environmental business including both manufacturing and services is analyzed. The book contains original research and application chapters from different perspectives. It is enriched through the analyses of case studies

Система побудови маршрутів кур’єрських перевезень з використанням мурашиних алгоритмів

Магістерська дисертація описує процес розробки системи, яка дозволяє будувати маршрути використовуючи мурашині алгоритми. Реалізовано в вигляді веб-застосування з використанням клієнт-серверної архітектури та сучасних засобів розробки програмного забезпечення.The master's thesis describes the process of the development of a system that allows to build routes using ant colony algorithm. Implemented as a web application using client-server architecture and modern development tools.Магистерская диссертация описывает процесс разработки системы, которая позволяет строить маршруты используя муравьиные алгоритмы. Реализовано в виде веб-приложения с использованием клиент-серверной архитектуры и современных средств разработки программного обеспечения

Primitive-based payment systems for flexible value transfer in the personal router

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology and Policy Program, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 149-154).This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.The Personal Router is a mobile communication device developed by the Advanced Network Architecture group at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. The Personal Router is able to select and negotiate connectivity with local providers for different kinds of services and interfaces. It needs payment procedures to support these services. As this device is designed to be used in many distinct unpredictable contexts, it cannot implement a single payment system. The complexity of existing payment systems has to be mapped into this new environment. A different payment system must be chosen each time, depending on many variables such as costs, environmental constraints, privacy, user and provider's needs and preferences. Privacy is a major issue for this device. In effect, getting wireless and mobile service everywhere will possibly leave an easily traceable trail; moreover, using this device supposes negotiating with many different untrusted providers and paying for the service. This can create huge potential threats for privacy and personal data management if this issue is not included in the early stage of the design. Legal requirements and user preferences and expectations for privacy in electronic transactions are therefore explored. Past attempts to enhance privacy in different environments are examined. Reasons why most of them have failed and some of them are struggling to stay alive are analyzed. New privacy threats faced by the Personal Router are considered. A new approach based on building blocks is made. Payment systems are split into primitive operations; each of them implements one step of a transaction. The combination of these building blocks replicates a payment protocol. The characteristics of a payment system can then be derived from the analysis of the implementation of each of these primitives. Users' preferences are defined by attributes. Payment systems can then be compared through their primitives and even slightly modified to be closer to users' ideal system by altering the primitives. The modular approach makes this easier. This framework is successfully tested on three major electronic payment systems. Several limitations of this approach and open issues related to the Personal Router are exposed.by Xavier F. Brucker.S.M

An investigation of the ant-based hyper-heuristic for capacitated vehicle routing problem and traveling salesman problem

A brief observation on recent research of routing problems shows that most of the methods used to tackle the problems are using heuristics and metaheuristics; and they often use problem specific knowledge to build or improve solutions. In the last few years, research on hyper-heuristic has been investigated which aims to raise the generality of optimisation systems. This thesis is concerned with the investigation of ant-based hyper-heuristic. Ant algorithms have been applied to vehicle routing problems and have produced competitive results. Therefore, it is assumed that there is a reasonable possibility that ant-based hyperheuristic could perform well for the problem. The thesis first surveys the literature for some common solution methodologies for optimisation problems and explores in some detail the ant algorithms and ant algorithm hyperheuristic methods. Furthermore, the literature specifically concerns with routing problems; the capacitated routing problem (CVRP) and the travelling salesman problem (TSP). The thesis studies the ant system algorithm and further proposes the ant algorithm hyper-heuristic, which introduces a new pheromone update rule in order to improve its performance. The proposed approach, called the ant-based hyper-heuristic is tested to two routing problems; the CVRP and TSP. Although it does not produce any best known results, the experimental results have shown that it is competitive with other methods. Most importantly, it demonstrates how simple and easy to implement low level heuristics, with no extensive parameter tuning. Further analysis shows that the approach possesses learning mechanism when compared to random hyper-heuristic. The approach investigates the number of low level heuristics appropriate and found out that the more low level heuristics used, the better solution is generated. In addition an ACO hyper-heuristic which has two categories of pheromone updates is developed. However, ant-based hyper-heuristic performs better and this is inconsistent with the performance of ACO algorithm in the literature. In TSP, we utilise two different categories of low level heuristics, the TSP heuristics and the CVRP heuristics that were previously used for the CVRP. From the observation, it can be seen that by using any heuristics for the same class of problems, ant-based hyper-heuristic is seen to be able to produce competitive results. This has demonstrated that the ant-based hyper-heuristic is a reusable method. One major advantage of this work is the usage of the same parameter for all problem instances with simple moves and swap procedures. It is hoped that in the future, results obtained will be better than current results by using better intelligent low level heuristics

An investigation of the ant-based hyper-heuristic for capacitated vehicle routing problem and traveling salesman problem

A brief observation on recent research of routing problems shows that most of the methods used to tackle the problems are using heuristics and metaheuristics; and they often use problem specific knowledge to build or improve solutions. In the last few years, research on hyper-heuristic has been investigated which aims to raise the generality of optimisation systems. This thesis is concerned with the investigation of ant-based hyper-heuristic. Ant algorithms have been applied to vehicle routing problems and have produced competitive results. Therefore, it is assumed that there is a reasonable possibility that ant-based hyperheuristic could perform well for the problem. The thesis first surveys the literature for some common solution methodologies for optimisation problems and explores in some detail the ant algorithms and ant algorithm hyperheuristic methods. Furthermore, the literature specifically concerns with routing problems; the capacitated routing problem (CVRP) and the travelling salesman problem (TSP). The thesis studies the ant system algorithm and further proposes the ant algorithm hyper-heuristic, which introduces a new pheromone update rule in order to improve its performance. The proposed approach, called the ant-based hyper-heuristic is tested to two routing problems; the CVRP and TSP. Although it does not produce any best known results, the experimental results have shown that it is competitive with other methods. Most importantly, it demonstrates how simple and easy to implement low level heuristics, with no extensive parameter tuning. Further analysis shows that the approach possesses learning mechanism when compared to random hyper-heuristic. The approach investigates the number of low level heuristics appropriate and found out that the more low level heuristics used, the better solution is generated. In addition an ACO hyper-heuristic which has two categories of pheromone updates is developed. However, ant-based hyper-heuristic performs better and this is inconsistent with the performance of ACO algorithm in the literature. In TSP, we utilise two different categories of low level heuristics, the TSP heuristics and the CVRP heuristics that were previously used for the CVRP. From the observation, it can be seen that by using any heuristics for the same class of problems, ant-based hyper-heuristic is seen to be able to produce competitive results. This has demonstrated that the ant-based hyper-heuristic is a reusable method. One major advantage of this work is the usage of the same parameter for all problem instances with simple moves and swap procedures. It is hoped that in the future, results obtained will be better than current results by using better intelligent low level heuristics

GeNeMe ´02 - Virtuelle Organisation und Neue Medien 2002: Workshop GeNeMe2002 Gemeinschaften in Neuen Medien: TU Dresden, 26. und 27. September 2002

Aus dem Vorwort: "Vor uns liegt der nunmehr fünfte Band unserer Tagungsreihe GeNeMe - Gemeinschaften in Neuen Medien - mit einer Vielzahl von Beiträgen in den Rubriken - Geschäfts- und Betreibermodelle von GeNeMe (siehe Einführung), - Konzepte von GeNeMe, - E-Learning in GeNeMe, - Kooperation in GeNeMe, - Anwendungen in GeNeMe, - Wissen und GeNeMe, - Medien für GeNeMe. Aus dem großen Angebot konnte wegen der Beschränkungen, die wir uns für die Tagung auferlegt haben, nur etwa die Hälfte der Beiträge Aufnahme finden. Das Interesse am Thema GeNeMe und das Diskussionsangebot von Ergebnissen zu diesem Thema sind im Lichte unserer Tagung also weiter steigend. Auch haben sich Konkretheit und Praxisbezug in den Beiträgen durchgesetzt. Die thematischen Rubriken wurden entgegen denen in der ersten Ankündigung entsprechend der Struktur des Angebotes neu gefasst. Dabei ist die explizite Diskussion von Geschäfts- und Betreiber-Modellen für GeNeMe (Virtuelle Unternehmen, Virtuelle Gemeinschaften etc.), insbesondere in der derzeit gedämpften gesamtwirtschaftlichen Lage, zeitgemäß und essentiell für ein Bestehen im Leben der Konzepte und Anwendungen für/in GeNeMe.":A. EINFÜHRUNG 1 A.1. GESCHÄFTSMODELL VIRTUELLE COMMUNITY: EINE ANALYSE BESTEHENDER COMMUNITIES 1 Jan Marco Leimeister, Andrea Bantleon, Prof. Dr. Helmut Krcmar Lehrstuhl für Wirtschaftsinformatik, Universität Hohenheim A.2. VIRTUELLE BILDUNGSNETZWERKE: STRUKTUR- UND BETREIBERMODELLE AM BEISPIELWINFOLINE 41 Oliver Bohl, Prof. Dr. Udo Winand Universität Kassel Guido Grohmann, Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. August-Wilhelm Scheer Universität des Saarlandes B. KONZEPTE VON GENEME 69 B.1. PEER-TO-PEER – EINE „VERTEILTE TECHNOLOGIE AUF DER SUCHE NACH EINEM „ZENTRALEN“ VERSTÄNDNIS 69 Claus Eikemeier, Prof. Dr. Ulrike Lechner Fachbereich für Mathematik und Informatik, Universität Bremen B.2. STRUKTURBILDUNG IN P2P-NETWORK-COMMUNITIES 91 Markus Wulff, Dr. Herwig Unger Fachbereich Informatik, Universität Rostock B.3. REPUTATION ALS STEUERUNGSINSTRUMENT IN NETZWERKINTERNENMÄRKTEN 107 Stefan Wittenberg, Prof. Dr. Thomas Hess Seminar für Wirtschaftsinformatik und Neue Medien, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München B.4. AUFTRAGSBEZOGENE PARTNERSELEKTION IN UNTERNEHMENSNETZWERKEN UNTER BENUTZUNG EINER MULTIKRITERIELLEN ZIELFUNKTION INNERHALB EINER ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION 133 Dr. rer. pol. Tobias Teich, Marco Fischer, Hendrik Jähn Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Technische Universität Chemnitz C. E-LEARNING IN GENEME 161 C.1. VIRTUELLE LERNGEMEINSCHAFTEN IN DER VFH 161 Udo Hinze, Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Gerold Blakowski Fachbereich Wirtschaft, Fachhochschule Stralsund C.2. ANFORDERUNGEN AN EINE TOOL-UNTERSTÜTZUNG FÜR LEHRENDE IN VIRTUELLEN KOLLABORATIVEN LERNSITUATIONEN – DIDAKTISCHE NORMEN UND PRAKTISCHE ERFAHRUNGEN AM BEISPIEL EINES E-COMMERCE-LERNPROJEKTES 189 Ildikó Balázs, Prof. Dr. Eric Schoop Fakultät Wirtschafstwissenschaften, Technische Universität Dresden C.3. NETZBASIERTES LERNEN UND ARBEITEN IN VIRTUELLEN GEMEINSCHAFTEN 219 Romy Pfretzschner, Dr. Thomas Hoppe Institut für Informatik, Universität Leipzig C.4. TELEKOOPERATIVES SEMINAR "VERNETZUNG UND GESELLSCHAFTLICHE ENTWICKLUNG" 241 Hermann Leustik Institut für Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaft, Universität Klagenfurt C.5. UNTERSTÜTZUNG VIRTUELLER LERNGEMEINSCHAFTEN DURCH GROUPWARE-TOOLS 259 Udo Hinze, Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Gerold Blakowski Fachbereich Wirtschaft, Fachhochschule Stralsund C.6. NEUEMEDIEN IN GUTER UNIVERSITÄRER LEHRE 287 Michael Janneck, Monique Strauss Fachbereich Informatik,Universität Hamburg C.7. NACHFRAGE UND ANGEBOT ZUR BENUTZUNGSBETREUUNG VON SOFTWARE IM UNIVERSITÄREN LEHRBETRIEB 305 Bernd Pape, Iver Jackewitz Fachbereich Informatik / WissPro, Universität Hamburg XI D. KOOPERATION IN GENEME 333 D.1. INTERNETBASIERTE PROJEKTKOORDINATION UND –STEUERUNG FÜR INGENIEURBÜROS 333 Rainer Münster, DE-Consult, Berlin Prof. Dr.-Ing. Peter Böttcher, Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Saarland, Saarbrücken Walter Stegner, DE-Consult, Karlsruhe D.2.WEGE ZU EINER SOFTWARE-KOMPONENTEN-INDUSTRIE - ERFOLGSFAKTOREN FÜR DIE BILDUNG VON VIRTUELLEN GEMEINSCHAFTEN IN DER SOFTWAREENTWICKLUNG 365 Oliver Höß, Anette Weisbecker Fraunhofer-Institut für Arbeitswirtschaft und Organisation, Universtität Stuttgart D.3. EINE RAHMENANWENDUNG FÜR DIE INFORMELLE TEAMARBEIT IN DOKUMENTENBESTÄNDEN 387 Alexander Lorz Heinz-Nixdorf-Stiftungslehrstuhl für Multimediatechnik, Technische Universität Dresden D.4. KAVIDO - EIN WEB-BASIERTES SYSTEM FÜR KOOPERATIVE FORSCHUNGSUND ENTWICKLUNGSPROZESSE 411 Oliver Taminé, Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Dillmann Institut für industrielle Anwendungen der Informatik und Mikrosystemtechnik, Universität Karlsruhe D.5. DER ÜBERGANG VOM E-COMMERCE ZUM COLLABORATIVE BUSINESS BEIM ANZEIGENGESCHÄFT VON ZEITUNGEN 425 Dr. Thomas Schindler, Robert Buck SAP Systems Integration AG, Freiberg a.N. Patrick Laz Manchette Publicité, St. Ouen, Frankreich XII D.6. VIRTUELLE INFORMATIONSSYSTEME ZUR UNTERSTÜTZUNG VON ORGANISATIONEN IN DEN NEUENMEDIEN 441 Detlef Neumann Technische Universität Dresden D.7. ANWENDUNGSINTEGRATION ENTLANG DER GESCHÄFTS-PROZESSE MITTELS WORKFLOW-MANAGEMENT-SYSTEM "KONTEXTFLOW" 57 Martin Halatchev Technische Universität Dresden E. ANWENDUNGEN IN GENEME 471 E.1. COMMUNITY ENGINEERING IM GESUNDHEITSWESEN: MOBILE VIRTUELLE GEMEINSCHAFTEN FÜR KREBSPATIENTEN - DAS PROJEKT COSMOS 471 Miriam Daum, Jan Marco Leimeister, Prof. Dr. Helmut Krcmar Lehrstuhl für Wirtschaftsinformatik, Universität Hohenheim E.2. E-COMMERCE IN DER ENTSORGUNGSINDUSTRIE: EINE E-COMMERCELÖSUNG FÜR DIENSTLEISTUNGEN ALS INSTRUMENT ZUR KUNDENBINDUNG IN DER ENTSORGUNGSINDUSTRIE 489 Prof. Dr. W. Dangelmaier, Andreas Emmrich, Ulrich Pape, Jörn Szegunis Fraunhofer ALB, Paderborn Thomas Grimm SULO Gruppe, Herford E.3. VON DER FOOD-COOP ZURMOBILITÄTS-COOP: COMPUTERGESTÜTZTE KOOPERATION ALS BEITRAG ZUR RESSOURCENSCHONUNG 513 Stefan Naumann Institut für Softwaresysteme in Wirtschaft, Umwelt und Verwaltung Fachhochschule Trier, Standort Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld F. WISSEN UND GENEME 529 F.1. EINFÜHRUNG UND ETABLIERUNG EINER KULTUR DESWISSENTEILENS IN ORGANISATIONEN 529 Prof. Dr. Heimo H. Adelsberger, Markus Bick, Thomas Hanke Wirtschaftsinformatik der Produktionsunternehmen, Universität Essen XIII F.2. VIRTUELLE KONFERENZEN 553 Claudia Bremer Kompetenzzentrum Neue Medien in der Lehre, Universität Frankfurt/Main F.3. EINSATZMÖGLICHKEITEN VON TEXT-MINING ZUR UNTER-STÜTZUNG VON INTERNETBASIERTEN IDEENFINDUNGS-PROZESSEN 577 Dirk Krause Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik Universität Leipzig G. MEDIEN FÜR GENEME 593 G.1. CRM AUF DER BASIS VON INTERNETTECHNOLOGIEN – EIN BEISPIEL 593 Dr. Roland Schröder Bode Management Consultants GmbH, Hamburg G.2. ENTWICKLUNG EINES DYNAMISCHEN WAP-INTERFACE AM BEISPIEL DER GESCHÄFTSPARTNERVERWALTUNG DES DOKUMENTENMANGEMENTSYSTEMS DOKWORKS DER FIRMA PHOENIX EDV- SYSTEMTECHNIK GMBH, ITZEHOE 613 Mathias Schnoor, Prof. Dr. Jörg Raasch Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Hambur