Topology design of industrial ethernet networks using a multi-objective genetic algorithm

This paper addresses the problem of network topology design from an industry perspective. The topology design of industrial communication networks is formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem, considering the specific requirements of industrial applications, e.g. the diversified real-time requirements, fast recovery time, high reliability, and low cost. Different from previous publications, the problem is discussed with respect to distributed multi-ring network structures. A weighted Dandelion encoding is proposed to represent multi-ring topologies and incorporated into a multi-objective genetic algorithm to find close-to-optimal solutions. Experimental results for different application examples show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.