Extension of Max-Min Ant System with Exponential Pheromone Deposition
  Rule
  The paper presents an exponential pheromone deposition approach to improve
the performance of classical Ant System algorithm which employs uniform
deposition rule. A simplified analysis using differential equations is carried
out to study the stability of basic ant system dynamics with both exponential
and constant deposition rules. A roadmap of connected cities, where the
shortest path between two specified cities are to be found out, is taken as a
platform to compare Max-Min Ant System model (an improved and popular model of
Ant System algorithm) with exponential and constant deposition rules. Extensive
simulations are performed to find the best parameter settings for non-uniform
deposition approach and experiments with these parameter settings revealed that
the above approach outstripped the traditional one by a large extent in terms
of both solution quality and convergence time.
