Discrete PSO for the uncapacitated single allocation hub location problem

Efficient network design and optimization of transportation and distribution systems has significant economic and service efficiency implications for both the public and private sectors. We propose a new solution based on a particle swarm optimization (PSO) for the uncapacitated single allocation hub location problem (USAHLP). Although various meta-heuristics have been proposed for this problem, to the authors´ knowledge, this is the first attempt to use a PSO framework for this problem. An empirical study is done using well-known benchmark problems from the Civil Aeronautics Board and Australian Post data sets with node sizes of up to 200. The beauty of the proposed approach is its simplicity and effectiveness, where its solution quality is compared with that of other meta-heuristics. The proposed discrete PSO matches or outperforms the solution quality of the current best-known methods for the USAHLP.