Abstract

We use ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm for solving combinatorial optimization problems such as the traveling salesman problem. Some applications of ACO are: vehicle routing, sequential ordering, graph coloring, routing in communications networks, etc. In this paper, we compare the performance of ACO to that of a few other state-of-the-art algorithms currently in use and thus measure the effectiveness of ACO as one of the major optimization algorithms in regard with a few more algorithms. The performance of the algorithms is measured by observing their capacity to solve a traveling salesman problem (TSP). This paper will help to find the proper algorithm to be used for routing problems in different real-life situations.