A Hybrid Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm for Solving the Ring Arc-Loading Problem

The past two decades have witnessed tremendous research activities in optimization methods for communication networks. One important problem in communication networks is the Weighted Ring Arc-Loading Problem (combinatorial optimization NP-complete problem). This problem arises in engineering and planning of the Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) systems. Specifically, for a given set of non-split and uni-directional point-to-point demands (weights), the objective is to find the routing for each demand (i.e., assignment of the demand to either clockwise or counter-clockwise ring) so that the maximum arc load is minimised. In this paper, we propose a Hybrid Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm to solve this problem. We compare our results with the results obtained by the standard Genetic Algorithm and Particle Swarm Optimization, used in literature.