2,405 research outputs found
An Efficient Implementation of the Robust Tabu Search Heuristic for Sparse Quadratic Assignment Problems
We propose and develop an efficient implementation of the robust tabu search
heuristic for sparse quadratic assignment problems. The traditional
implementation of the heuristic applicable to all quadratic assignment problems
is of O(N^2) complexity per iteration for problems of size N. Using multiple
priority queues to determine the next best move instead of scanning all
possible moves, and using adjacency lists to minimize the operations needed to
determine the cost of moves, we reduce the asymptotic complexity per iteration
to O(N log N ). For practical sized problems, the complexity is O(N)
Comparative Performance of Tabu Search and Simulated Annealing Heuristics for the Quadratic Assignment Problem
For almost two decades the question of whether tabu search (TS) or simulated
annealing (SA) performs better for the quadratic assignment problem has been
unresolved. To answer this question satisfactorily, we compare performance at
various values of targeted solution quality, running each heuristic at its
optimal number of iterations for each target. We find that for a number of
varied problem instances, SA performs better for higher quality targets while
TS performs better for lower quality targets
A nonmonotone GRASP
A greedy randomized adaptive search procedure (GRASP) is an itera-
tive multistart metaheuristic for difficult combinatorial optimization problems. Each
GRASP iteration consists of two phases: a construction phase, in which a feasible
solution is produced, and a local search phase, in which a local optimum in the
neighborhood of the constructed solution is sought. Repeated applications of the con-
struction procedure yields different starting solutions for the local search and the
best overall solution is kept as the result. The GRASP local search applies iterative
improvement until a locally optimal solution is found. During this phase, starting from
the current solution an improving neighbor solution is accepted and considered as the
new current solution. In this paper, we propose a variant of the GRASP framework that
uses a new “nonmonotone” strategy to explore the neighborhood of the current solu-
tion. We formally state the convergence of the nonmonotone local search to a locally
optimal solution and illustrate the effectiveness of the resulting Nonmonotone GRASP
on three classical hard combinatorial optimization problems: the maximum cut prob-
lem (MAX-CUT), the weighted maximum satisfiability problem (MAX-SAT), and
the quadratic assignment problem (QAP)
An Algorithm for the Generalized Quadratic Assignment Problem
This paper reports on a new algorithm for the Generalized Quadratic Assignment problem (GQAP). The GQAP describes a broad class of quadratic integer programming problems, wherein M pair-wise related entities are assigned to N destinations constrained by the destinations’ ability to accommodate them. This new algorithm is based on a Reformulation Linearization Technique (RLT) dual ascent procedure. Experimental results show that the runtime of this algorithm is as good or better than other known exact solution methods for problems as large as M=20 and N=15
Hybridization as Cooperative Parallelism for the Quadratic Assignment Problem
International audienceThe Quadratic Assignment Problem is at the core of several real-life applications. Finding an optimal assignment is computationally very difficult, for many useful instances. The best results are obtained with hybrid heuristics, which result in complex solvers. We propose an alternate solution where hybridization is obtain by means of parallelism and cooperation between simple single-heuristic solvers. We present experimental evidence that this approach is very efficient and can effectively solve a wide variety of hard problems, often surpassing state-of-the-art systems
New Knowledge about the Elementary Landscape Decomposition for Solving the Quadratic Assignment Problem
Previous works have shown that studying the characteristics of the Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP) is a crucial step in gaining knowledge that can be used to design tailored meta-heuristic algorithms. One way to analyze the characteristics of the QAP is to decompose its objective function into a linear combination of orthogonal sub-functions that can be independently studied. In particular, this work focuses on a decomposition approach that has attracted considerable attention: The Elementary Landscape Decomposition (ELD).The main drawback of the ELD is that it does not allow an understandable characterization of what is being measured by each component of the decomposition. Thus, it turns out difficult to design new efficient meta-heuristic algorithms for the QAP based on the ELD. To address this issue, in this work, we delve deeper into the ELD by means of an additional decomposition of its elementary components. Conducted experiments show that the performed analysis may be used to explain the behaviour of ELD-based methods, providing critical information about their potential applications
Are the artificially generated instances uniform in terms of difficulty?
In the field of evolutionary computation, it is usual to generate artificial benchmarks of instances that are used as a test-bed to determine the performance of the algorithms at hand. In this context, a recent work on permutation problems analyzed the implications of generating instances uniformly at random (u.a.r.) when building those benchmarks. Particularly, the authors analyzed instances as rankings of the solutions of the search space sorted according to their objective function value. Thus, two instances are considered equivalent when their objective functions induce the same ranking over the search space. Based on the analysis, they suggested that, when some restrictions hold, the probability to create easy rankings is higher than creating difficult ones.
In this paper, we continue on that research line by adopting the framework of local search algorithms with the best improvement criterion. Particularly, we empirically analyze, in terms of difficulty, the instances (rankings) created u.a.r. of three popular problems: Linear Ordering Problem, Quadratic Assignment Problem and Flowshop Scheduling Problem. As the neighborhood system is critical for the performance of local search algorithms three different neighborhood systems have been considered: swap, interchange and insert. Conducted experiments reveal that (1) by sampling the parameters uniformly at random we obtain instances with a non-uniform distribution in terms of difficulty, (2) the distribution of the difficulty strongly depends on the pair problem-neighborhood considered, and (3) given a problem, the distribution of the difficulty seems to depend on the smoothness of the landscape induced by the neighborhood and on its size.Research Groups 2013-2018 (IT-609-13)
TIN2016-78365-R(Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness
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