A temporal ant colony optimization approach to the shortest path problem in dynamic scale-free networks

A large number of networks in the real world have a scale-free structure, and the parameters of the networks change stochastically with time. Searching for the shortest paths in a scale-free dynamic and stochastic network is not only necessary for the estimation of the statistical characteristics such as the average shortest path length of the network, but also challenges the traditional concepts related to the “shortest path” of a network and the design of path searching strategies. In this paper, the concept of shortest path is defined on the basis of a scale-free dynamic and stochastic network model, and a temporal ant colony optimization (TACO) algorithm is proposed for searching for the shortest paths in the network. The convergence and the setup for some important parameters of the TACO algorithm are discussed through theoretical analysis and computer simulations, validating the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.