Parameter tuning for ant colony optimization: A review

Abstract

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) has enjoyed development and improvement since it was introduced in 1990s. The development of ACO was primarily driven by its convergence problem. Balancing between intensification and diversification in the search space is an important factor to intelligently improve solutions and avoid premature convergence. Balancing intensification and diversification can be gained by controlling the parameters value (this is called parameter tuning). Unfortunately, only little research has been reported to adopt parameter tuning as a strategy to balance intensification and diversification in ACO. This paper review parameter tuning in ACO published in the literature.