Black box scatter search for general classes of binary optimization problems
The purpose of this paper is to apply the scatter search methodology to general classes of binary problems. We focus on optimization problems for which the solutions are represented as binary vectors and that may or may not include constraints. Binary problems arise in a variety of settings, including engineering design and statistical mechanics (e.g., the spin glass problem). A distinction is made between two sets of general constraint types that are handled directly by the solver and other constraints that are addressed via penalty functions. In both cases, however, the heuristic treats the objective function evaluation as a black box. We perform computational experiments with four well-k…
A hybrid metaheuristic for the cyclic antibandwidth problem
We propose a hybrid artificial bee colony algorithm for the cyclic antibandwidth problem.We present a computational comparison of different parameter settings.We derive a fine-tuning hybrid artificial bee colony algorithm.The proposal is very competitive with the state-of-the-art algorithm for the cyclic antibandwidth problem. In this paper, we propose a hybrid metaheuristic algorithm to solve the cyclic antibandwidth problem. This hard optimization problem consists of embedding an n-vertex graph into the cycle Cn, such that the minimum distance (measured in the cycle) of adjacent vertices is maximized. It constitutes a natural extension of the well-known antibandwidth problem, and can be v…
Tabu search for the Max–Mean Dispersion Problem
In this paper, we address a variant of a classical optimization model in the context of maximizing the diversity of a set of elements. In particular, we propose heuristics to maximize the mean dispersion of the selected elements in a given set. This NP-hard problem was recently introduced as the maximum mean dispersion problem (MaxMeanDP), and it models several real problems, from pollution control to ranking of web pages. In this paper, we first review the previous methods for the MaxMeanDP, and then explore different tabu search approaches, and their influence on the quality of the solutions obtained. As a result, we propose a dynamic tabu search algorithm, based on three different neighb…
Heuristics for the bandwidth colouring problem
The bandwidth colouring problem consists of assigning a colour to each vertex of a graph, so that the absolute value of the difference between the colours of adjacent vertices is at least the value of the weight of the associated edge. This problem generalises the classical vertex colouring problem and different heuristics have recently been proposed to obtain high quality solutions. In this paper we describe both memory-based and memory-less methods to solve the bandwidth colouring problem. In particular we propose new constructive and improvement methods based on tabu search and GRASP. Comparison of our results with previously reported instances and existing heuristics indicate that the m…