Redundant Instruments Placement Using ACO

In this paper, ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm is introduced to redundant instruments placement for optimum process variable estimation accuracy. It is proved that additional redundancy measurement will enhance estimation accuracy if the measurements relate the process variables in a different way, whereas the quantity of accuracy improvement is determined by the measurements structure. To find the optimal redundant instruments placement is substantially combinatorial optimization problem, ant colony system (ACS) can perform this perfectly. In this paper, ACO based redundant instruments placement algorithm is proposed. Simulation shows the proposed outperform the GA algorithm, which is a prevailing algorithm to combinatorial problem.