A comparison between simulated annealing, genetic algorithm and tabu search methods for the unconstrained quadratic Pseudo-Boolean function

In this paper we developed three meta-heurstics procedures: simulated annealing, genetic algorithm and tabu search, for the unconstrained quadratic Pseudo-Boolean function. Several benchmark test problems, which were considered difficult to solve by other procedures, were generated for comparison. Several parameters were tested for each method to observe its final performance. Computational results demonstrate some differences among the three methods’ final solutions and their computational time. Computational results also show that the proposed heuristics are capable of solving hard instance problems with a new quality solution in less computational time.