Product Search Algorithm Based on Improved Ant Colony Optimization in a Distributed Network

The crowd intelligence-based e-commerce transaction network (CIeTN) is a distributed and unstructured network structure. Smart individuals, such as buyers, sellers, and third-party organizations, can store information in local nodes and connect and share information via moments. The purpose of this study is to design a product search algorithm on the basis of ant colony optimization (ACO) to achieve an efficient and accurate search for the product demand of a node in the network. We introduce the improved ideas of maximum and minimum ants to design a set of heuristic search algorithms on the basis of ACO. To reduce search blindness, additional relevant heuristic factors are selected to define the heuristic calculation equation. The pheromone update mechanism integrating into the product matching factor and forwarding probability is used to design the network search rules among nodes in the search algorithm. Finally, the search algorithm is facilitated by Java language programming and PeerSim software. Experimental results show that the algorithm has significant advantages over the flooding method and the random walk method in terms of search success rate, search time, product matching, search network consumption, and scalability. The search algorithm introduces the idea of improving the maximum and minimum ant colony system and proposes new ideas in the design of heuristic factors in the heuristic equation and the pheromone update strategy. The search algorithm can search for product information effectively. © The author(s) 2022.