Genetic Algorithm Performance with Different Selection Strategies in Solving TSP

A genetic algorithm (GA) has several genetic operators that can be modified to improve the performance of particular implementations. These operators include parent selection, crossover and mutation. Selection is one of the important operations in the GA process. There are several ways for selection. This paper presents the comparison of GA performance in solving travelling salesman problem (TSP) using different parent selection strategy. Several TSP instances were tested and the results show that tournament selection strategy outperformed proportional roulette wheel and rank based roulette wheel selections, achieving best solution quality with low computing times. Results also reveal that tournament and proportional roulette wheel can be superior to the rank based roulette wheel selection for smaller problems only and become susceptible to premature convergence as problem size increases.