IEICE Transactions on Communications
Online ISSN : 1745-1345
Print ISSN : 0916-8516
Regular Section
An Improved Ant Colony Algorithm for the Vehicle Routing Problem in Time-Dependent Networks
Yongqiang LIUQing CHANGHuagang XIONG
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2011 Volume E94.B Issue 5 Pages 1506-1510

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Abstract

Vehicle routing is an important combinatorial optimization problem. In real transport networks,the travel speed and travel time of roads have large time-variability and randomness. The study of vehicle routing problem in time-dependent network has even more practical value than static network VRP problem. This paper combines the features of time-dependent networks and gives the mathematical models of the time-dependent vehicle routing problem. On this basis, the traditional ant colony optimization algorithm is improved. A new path transfer strategy of ants and new dynamic pheromone update strategy applicable to time-dependent network are proposed. Based on these strategies, the improved ant colony algorithm is given for solving the vehicle routing problem in time-dependent networks. The simulation results show that the algorithm can effectively solve the vehicle routing problem in time-dependent network and has better computational efficiency and convergence speed.

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© 2011 The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers
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