Ant colony optimization algorithm based on space contraction

According to the problem of slow running speed in ant colony algorithm, a space contraction ant colony optimization algorithm has been designed, through introducing space contraction transformation operations into standard ACS algorithm. The speed of the algorithm could be increased, because the algorithm integrates the building block of high concentration pheromone constantly. It could reduce the size of the solution composition sets and building block sets. The test results of algorithm performance show that, compared with ACS algorithm, the ant colony algorithm based on space contraction has faster speed. And the algorithm has better search ability than ACS algorithm, when solving large-scale optimization problems in discrete domain.