An improved ant colony optimization algorithm and its application to electromagnetic devices designs

Based on the success in the design of a new global search procedure on the development of a novel trail updating mechanism and the introduction of an elitist strategy to available ant colony optimization (ACO) methods, an improved ACO algorithm is proposed. In order to facilitate the implementation of the search procedure, the available local search phase is simplified also. The algorithm is tested on a mathematical function and an inverse problem, and its performances are compared with those of other well designed methods.