Hardware-oriented ant colony optimization

A new kind of ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm is proposed that is suitable for an implementation in hardware. The new algorithm – called Counter-based ACO – allows to systolically pipe artificial ants through a grid of processing cells. Various features of this algorithm have been designed so that it can be mapped easily to field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Examples are a new encoding of pheromone information and a new method to define the decision sequence of ants. Experimental results that are based on simulations for the traveling salesperson problem and the quadratic assignment problem are presented to evaluate the proposed techniques.