International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 8887)

Volume 49 No.17, July 2012

Ant Colony Optimization in Diverse Engineering

Applications: an Overview
R. Geetha

G. Umarani Srikanth

Associate Professor,
Department of CSE,
S.A Engineering College
Chennai, Tamilnadu, India.

Associate Professor,
Department of PG Studies,
S.A Engineering College,
Chennai, Tamilnadu, India.

ABSTRACT
Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a technique that was
introduced in the early 1990s and it is inspired by the
foraging behavior of ant colonies. ACO algorithms have long
been thought as generating high quality solutions for various
problems in different Engineering Applications. This survey
provides an overview of past and on-going research of ACO
in diverse engineering applications pertaining to computer
science fields such as mobile and wireless networks, sensor
networks, grid computing, P2P Computing, Pervasive
computing, Data mining, Software engineering, Database
systems, Multicore Processing, Artificial intelligence, Image
processing, Biomedical applications and also other domains
relevant to Electronics and Electrical Engineering fields. We
finally summarize the comprehensive study of applications in
all these fields deployed ACO.

Keywords
ACO, Mobile and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), Grid
and P2P computing, Pervasive Computing, Network Security,
Data Mining, Multicore Processors, Engineering Applications.

1.INTRODUCTION
The growing importance of telecommunication and the
Internet led to the development of more complex networked
systems. The challenges of dealing with the vast complexity
of networking problems such as handling large-scale
networks, their dynamic nature, resource constraints,
heterogeneity, load balancing, routing congestion control,
unattended operation and robustness accentuate the need for
more sophisticated techniques to solve these problems. Power
consumption is one of the most important problems for WSNs
because of the battery limitation in each sensor. Scheduling
sensor activities is an effective way to prolong the lifetime of
WSNs. The protection of integrity and confidentiality of the
information and protection from unauthorized access are
important issues. However due to factors such as resource
limitations, absence of centralized access points, open
wireless medium and small size of the sensor nodes,
implementation of security in WSNs is a challenging task.
Maximizing the lifetime of WSNs is also a challenging
problem.
In mobile sensor networks [1], it is essential to manage the
mobility of the nodes in order to improve the performance of
the network. Location management is a complex problem in
todays mobile computing environment. There is a need to
but also the problem of human resource allocation. But as
both of these two problems are difficult, existing models
either suffer from a very large search space or have to restrict

develop algorithms that could capture this complexity yet can

be easily implemented and used to solve a wide range of
location management scenarios.
It is a challenge for the traditional centralized or hierarchical
grid architecture to manage the large-scale and dynamic
resources while providing scalability. Task scheduling with
load balancing in grid computing aims to assign tasks to
computing nodes and minimize the execution time of tasks as
well as workload across all nodes. The problem of scheduling
workflows in terms of certain Quality of Service (QoS)
requirements is challenging and it significantly influences the
performance of grids. Grid service reliability, task scheduling
and resource discovery have not been sufficiently studied.
Constructing an efficient resource discovery mechanism is
crucial for a decentralized and self-organized P2P information
system in computational grids. How to reduce the number of
messages or to improve searching efficiency has been a key
problem which restricts the expanding of decentralized and
unstructured Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks. The principles of
self-organization, resource searching and emergence have
received a lot of interest in the research community recently.
Pervasive environments are becoming increasingly more
popular due to the benefits of context-aware, user-centric
service provisioning, despite their inherent challenges, i.e.
dynamicity, heterogeneity and complexity. In such
environments, multiple applications with distinct network
requirements run simultaneously over the same underlying
networks. Serving as abstractions to the latter, P2P overlays
enable applications to operate over virtual networks that
adhere to specified requirements.
The challenges within data mining research areas like
discovering
a list of classification rules, clustering,
processing large amount of data and eliminate redundant
information, etc need to be resolved in an intelligent manner.
Feature selection and feature extraction are the two important
processes in a classification system. High quality and fast
clustering algorithms play a vital role for users to navigate,
effectively organize and summarize data.
Research into developing effective computer aided techniques
for planning software projects is also vital and challenging in
software engineering. Different from projects in other fields,
software projects are people-intensive activities and their
related resources are mainly human resources. Thus an
adequate model is required for software project planning has
to deal with not only the problem of project task scheduling
the flexibility of human resource allocation to simplify the
model. Resource allocation, as an integral part of Business
Process Management (BPM), is more widely acknowledged
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Volume 49 No.17, July 2012
by its importance for process-aware information systems.
Despite the industrial need for efficient and effective resource
allocation in BPM, few scientifically-grounded approaches
exist to support these initiatives.
The problem of assigning each task in a given task graph to a
processor in a reconfigurable multi processor architecture so
as to minimize the total overall execution time of the tasks,
information exchange in actual shared-memory parallel
computers are some of the challenging research issues. The
performance and the efficiency of a distributed database
system depend highly on the way data are allocated to the
sites. The NP-completeness of the data allocation problem and
the large size of its real occurrence need a fast and scalable
heuristic algorithm.
The reconstruction of DNA sequences from DNA fragments
is one of the most challenging problems in computational
biology. In recent years the specific problem of DNA
sequencing by hybridization has attracted quite a lot of
interest in the optimization community.
Modern digital systems consist of a complex mix of
computational resources, e.g. microprocessors, memory
elements and reconfigurable logic. System partitioning - the
division of application tasks onto the system resources - plays
an important role for the optimization of the latency, area,
power and other performance metrics. The Semiconductor
Wafer Fabrication System (SWFS) is extremely difficult to
schedule due to its typical features such as large-scale,
multiple re-entrant flows and hybrid machine types.
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is
sensitive to Carrier Frequency Offset (CFO) that causes InterCarrier Interference (ICI).
Electrical-to-kinetic energy conversion efficiency of
Synchronous Induction Coil Guns (SICG) is the main limiting
factor of its development. In the system of SICG, the change
of any electromagnetic parameters can directly or indirectly
affects the electrical-to-kinetic energy conversion efficiency.
Optimizing electric circuits with components, like resistors
and capacitors, available in discrete values is a research issue.
The solution to all the above mentioned issues is the use of
bio inspired optimization technique called ACO which gives a
quick and optimal solution to various problems related to
different Engineering Applications.

2.ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION

ACO [2] is an algorithm based on the behavior of the real ants
in finding a shortest path from a source to the food. It utilizes
the behavior of the real ants while searching for the food. It
has been observed that the ants deposit a certain amount of
pheromone in its path while traveling from its nest to the food.
Again while returning, the ants are subjected to follow the
same path marked by the pheromone deposit and again
deposit the pheromone in its path. In this way the ants
following the shorter path are expected to return earlier and
hence increase the amount of pheromone deposit in its path at
a faster rate than the ants following a longer path.
ACO takes the inspiration from the foraging behavior of the
ants. These ants deposit pheromone on the ground in order to
mark some favorable path that should be followed by other
members of the colony. However the pheromone is subjected
to evaporation by a certain amount at a constant rate after a
certain interval and therefore the paths visited by the ants
frequently are only kept as marked by the pheromone deposit,
whereas the paths rarely visited by the ants are lost because of
the lack of pheromone deposit on that path and as a result the
new ants are intended to follow the frequently used paths
only. Thus all the ants starting their journey can learn from the

information left by the previously visitor ants and are guided

to follow the shorter path directed by the pheromone deposit.
In ACO a number of artificial ants(here data packets) build
solutions to the considered optimization problem at hand and
exchange information on the quality of these solutions via a
communication scheme that is pheromone deposit on the path
of the journey performed by it. ACO has been formalized into
a metaheuristic [3] for combinatorial optimization problems
by Dorigo.

3.APPLICATIONS OF ACO
ACO is being widely used in different Engineering
Applications. This section addresses few recent issues which
are solved by various authors in various fields of Engineering
such as Computer Science, Electrical, Electronics, and
Biomedical etc. using Ant Colony Optimization Techniques.

3.1 Mobile and Wireless Sensor Networks

(WSNs)
In mobile sensor networks, it is important to manage the
mobility of the nodes in order to improve the performances of
the network. The problem of single target tracking in
controlled mobility sensor networks is addressed by the author
[1]. The proposed method consists of estimating the current
position of a single target. Estimated positions are then used
to predict the following location of the target. While the
estimation and the prediction phases are performed using the
interval theory, relocating nodes employs ACO. Simulations
results corroborate the efficiency of the method compared to
the target tracking methods considered for networks with
static nodes.
Maximizing the lifetime of WSNs is a challenging problem.
The methodology is based on finding the maximum number
of disjoint connected covers that satisfy both sensing coverage
and network connectivity. The approach using ACO [4] has
been applied to a variety of heterogeneous WSNs. The results
show that the approach is effective in finding high-quality
solutions for maximizing the lifetime of heterogeneous
WSNs.
The author proposed the ACO approach to distributed Sensor
Wakeup Control (SWC) in WSNs [5] to accomplish the joint
task of surveillance and target tracking or cluster leaders. The
approach is free of the problems caused by leader failures and
can save the communication cost for leader selection. It is
robust to false alarms because the pheromone is accumulated
temporally and spatially, thus is more reliable for wakeup
control. The method does not need the knowledge of node
position. Simulations are carried out to evaluate the
performance of the method in comparison with representative
methods.
ACO mechanisms and the associated techniques for resolving
routing in WSNs are investigated in [6]. The author presented
a mathematical theory of the biological computations in the
context of sensor networks and a generalized routing
framework in sensor networks by diffusing different modes of
biological computations using ACO and genetic approaches.

3.2 Network Security

Applying the idea of ACO into network vulnerability
detection and restoration system can improve the performance
of network security management. A novel method is proposed
in [7] called Multi mobile Agent Vulnerability Detection and
Restoration System (MAVDRS) in which the restoration
mechanism which adopts ACO is proposed. It is proved that
the model can ensure Intranet's security has a lower delay and
higher network bandwidth utilization.
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3.3Peer To Peer (P2P) and Grid Computing

A new trust evaluation model based on ACO is presented in
[8]. The recommendation relationship and the pheromone are
associated in this model; several optimized trust paths
between the requesting peer and the target peer are archived
by enforcing the extended ACO Algorithm. The reputation
value of the target peer is composed of the trust values
generated from different recommendation paths and the
requesting peers always select the target peers with uppermost
reputation values for transaction. It is substantiated that this
model can further alleviate negative impact due to the
malicious peers and reduce the message overhead.
In [9] Antares which is a bio-inspired algorithm for the
construction of a decentralized and self-organized P2P
information system in computational grids is addressed. This
self-structured organization combines the benefits of both
unstructured and structured P2P information systems. Indeed,
being basically unstructured, Antares is easy to maintain in a
dynamic grid, in which joins and departs of hosts can be
frequent events. On the other hand, the aggregation and
spatial ordering of descriptors can improve the rapidity and
effectiveness of discovery operations which is a beneficial
feature typical of structured systems. Performance analysis
proved that ant operations allow the information system to be
efficiently reorganized thus improving the efficacy of both
simple and range queries.
In grid environment discussed in [10] applications are always
regarded as workflows. The problem of scheduling workflows
in terms of certain QoS requirements is challenging and it
significantly influences the performance of grids. The ACO
algorithm proposed schedules large-scale workflows with
various QoS parameters. This algorithm enabled users to
specify their QoS preferences as well as to define the
minimum QoS thresholds for a certain application. The
objective of this algorithm is to find a solution that meets all
QoS constraints and optimizes the user-preferred QoS
parameter. Based on the characteristics of workflow
scheduling, the author has designed seven new heuristics for
the ACO approach and proposed an adaptive scheme that
allows artificial ants to select heuristics based on pheromone
values. Experiments are done in ten workflow applications
with at most 120 tasks and the results demonstrate the
effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
By integrating the P2P philosophy and techniques into a Grid
architecture, P2P Grid system is emerging as a promising
platform for executing large-scale, resource intensive
applications. The author in [11] proposed and designed a
large-scale P2P Grid system which employs an ACO
algorithm to locate the required resources. The ACO method
avoids a large-scale flat flooding and supports multi-attribute
range query. Multiple ants can be employed to improve the
parallelism of the method. Comprehensive simulation results
validated the effectiveness of the proposed method compared
with the traditional unstructured and structured approaches.
For some grid services which have large subtasks requiring
time-consuming computation, the reliability of grid service
could be rather low. To resolve this problem, the author in
[12] introduced Local Node Fault Recovery (LNFR)
mechanism into grid systems and presented an in-depth study
on grid service reliability modeling and analysis with this kind
of fault recovery. To make LNFR mechanism practical, some
constraints, i.e. the life times of subtasks and the numbers of
recoveries performed in grid nodes are introduced and grid
service reliability models under these practical constraints are
developed. Based on the proposed grid service reliability
model the author presented a multi-objective task scheduling

optimization model and developed ACO algorithm to solve it

effectively.

3.4 Pervasive Computing

Pervasive environments are becoming increasingly popular
due to the benefits of context-aware, user-centric service
provisioning, despite their inherent challenges, i.e.
dynamicity, heterogeneity and complexity. In such
environments, multiple applications with distinct network
requirements run simultaneously over the same underlying
networks. Serving as abstractions to the latter, P2P overlays
enable applications to operate over virtual networks that
adhere to specified requirements. The author in [13] proposed
AntOM, a topology optimization algorithm for multi-layer
P2P overlays on top of pervasive environments. The
algorithm is inspired by ACO in regards to the network
exploration and neighborhood optimization. By utilizing
different ant families, multiple overlay layers, each one
optimized for a different property, can be concurrently
maintained at a low cost as proven by the experimental
results.

3.5 Computer Architecture

The author in [14] combined the memory principle and ACO
in Intrusion Detection System (IDS). The method of
controlling pheromone used in ACO is applied to simulate the
memory process of human brain and the concept of
pheromone is put forth. The processes of memorizing and
forgetting are reasonably interpreted through the increase and
decrease of pheromone in the algorithm, a new memory
algorithm is formed to finish the processes of memorizing and
forgetting after considering the impact of abnormal
characteristics weight value on pheromone. Examples show
that the algorithm is capable of realizing memorizing and
forgetting processes and increasing the robustness and self
adaptability of IDS.
The problem of determining whether a set of periodic tasks
can be assigned to a set of heterogeneous processors without
deadline violations has been shown, in general, to be NP-hard.
The author in [15] presented a new algorithm based on ACO
meta-heuristic for solving this problem. A local search
heuristic that can be used by various meta-heuristics to
improve the assignment solution is proposed and its time and
space complexity is analyzed. In addition to being able to
search for a feasible assignment solution, this extended ACO
algorithm can optimize the solution by lowering its energy
consumption.

3.6 Data Mining

The author in [16] proposed a new sequential covering
strategy for ACO classification algorithms to mitigate the
problem of rule interaction, where the order of the rules is
implicitly encoded as pheromone values and the search is
guided by the quality of a candidate list of rules. It is
experimented using eighteen publicly available data sets and
proved that the predictive accuracy obtained by a new ACO
classification algorithm implementing the sequential covering
strategy is statistically significantly higher than the predictive
accuracy of state-of-the-art rule induction classification.
The author in [17] created a system for power load forecasting
using support vector machine and ACO. A method is
employed to process large amount of data and eliminate
redundant information. The system mines the historical daily
loading which has the same meteorological category as the
forecasting day in order to compose data sequence with highly
similar meteorological features. The method reduced Support
Vector Machine (SVM) training data and overcome the
disadvantage of very large data and slow processing speed
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Volume 49 No.17, July 2012
when constructing SVM model. It can mine the data more
overall and accurate than the original fuzzy-rough method, an
entropy-based feature selector, and a transformation-based
reduction method, PCA. It is proved that the new method can
achieve greater forecasting accuracy when compared with
single SVM and BP neural network in short-term load
forecasting

3.7 Image Processing

An edge detection technique based on ACO which established
a pheromone matrix that represents the edge information at
each pixel based on the routes formed by the ants dispatched
on the image is addressed [18]. The movement of the ants is
guided by the local variation in the image's intensity values.
The proposed method takes advantage of the improvements
introduced in ant colony system, one of the main extensions to
the original ant system. Experimental results proved the
success of the technique in extracting edges from a digital
image.
The author in [19] proposed a novel scheme for texture
segmentation and representation based on ACO. Texture
segmentation and texture characteristic expression are two
important areas in image pattern recognition. Nevertheless,
until now, how to find an effective way for accomplishing
these tasks is still a major challenge in practical applications
such as iris image processing. By defining different kinds of
direction probability and movement difficulty for artificial
ants, an ACO based image segmentation algorithm and a
texture representation method are presented for automatic iris
image processing. Experimental results demonstrated that the
ACO based image processing methods are competitive and
quite promising, with excellent effectiveness and
practicability especially for images with complex local texture
situations.
The estimation of noise statistics is critical to optimize many
computer vision algorithms. The main issue is how to identify
the homogeneous image patches for estimating the noise
statistics. The author in [20] proposed an approach that has
two key components. First, a graphical representation is
proposed to model the relationship among image patches.
Second, the ACO technique is used to automatically select a
set of patches for estimating the noise statistics. To be more
specific, this approach guided the spatial movement of
artificial ants towards homogeneous locations in the graph, by
considering both global (i.e., clustering measure) properties
and local (i.e., homogeneity measure) properties of patches. It
is proved that this approach outperforms nine conventional
approaches to provide more accurate noise statistics
estimation.

3.8 Software Engineering

The Multimode Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling
Problem with Discounted Cash Flows (MRCPSPDCF) is
challenging for project management. To design an effective
algorithm for the MRCPSPDCF, the author in [21] proposed
an ACO based approach. It is promising for the MRCPSPDCF
due to the following three reasons. First, MRCPSPDCF can
be formulated as a graph-based search problem, which ACO
has been found to be good at solving. Second, the mechanism
of ACO enables the use of domain-based heuristics to
accelerate the search. Furthermore ACO has found good
results for the classical single-mode scheduling problems.
This algorithm is compared with two different Genetic
Algorithms (GAs), a Simulated Annealing (SA) algorithm and
a Tabu Search (TS) algorithm on 55 random instances.
Experimental results proved that the algorithm outperforms
the GA, SA, and TS approaches on most cases.

Research into developing effective computer aided techniques

for planning software projects is important and challenging
for software engineering. Thus an adequate model for
software project planning has to deal with not only the
problem of project task scheduling but also the problem of
human resource allocation. To develop a flexible and effective
model for software project planning, the author in [22]
proposed a novel approach with an Event-Based Scheduler
(EBS) and an ACO algorithm. The approach represents a plan
by a task list and a planned employee allocation matrix. In
this way, both the issues of task scheduling and employee
allocation can be taken into account. In the EBS, the
beginning time of the project, the time when resources are
released from finished tasks and the time when employees
join or leave the project are regarded as events. The basic idea
of the EBS is to adjust the allocation of employees at events
and keep the allocation unchanged at non-events. With this
strategy, the proposed method enabled the modeling of
resource conflict and task preemption and preserves the
flexibility in human resource allocation.
Network analysis provides an effective practical system for
planning and controlling large projects in construction and
many other fields. The author in [23] presented the use of
ACO system for solving and calculating both deterministic
and probabilistic Critical Path Method/ Programme
Evaluation Review Technique (CPM/PERT) networks. This
method is investigated for a selected case study in
construction management. The results demonstrated that ACO
can produce good optimal and suboptimal solutions.

3.9 Electronics
The author in [24] introduced ACO into the design of flatgain-spectrum Raman Fiber Amplifiers (RFAs) for the first
time. In this novel design method, the pump powers and
pump wavelengths are optimized by ACO to obtain a flat gain
spectrum with a pre-specified maximum gain ripple under the
given parameters of RFAs. The author proved that the
proposed method is efficient and stable.
The author in[25] proposed ACO application to a Fuzzy
Controller (FC) design, called ACO-FC for improving design
efficiency and control performance as well as ACO hardware
implementation. An FCs antecedent part, i.e., the if part of
its composing fuzzy if-then rules is partitioned in grid-type
and all candidate rule consequent values are then listed. An
ant trip is regarded as a combination of consequent values
selected from every rule. A pheromone matrix among all
candidate consequent values is constructed. Searching for the
best one among all combinations of rule consequent values is
based mainly on the pheromone matrix. The author proved
that ACO-FC performance is better than other meta-heuristic
design methods on simulation examples.

3.10 Electrical
Electrical-to-kinetic energy conversion efficiency of
Synchronous Induction Coil Guns (SICG) is the main limiting
factor of its development. In the system of SICG, the change
of any electromagnetic parameters can directly or indirectly
affects the electrical-to-kinetic energy conversion efficiency.
In order to improve the electrical-to-kinetic energy conversion
efficiency of SICG, the electromechanical model of SICG was
built. The author in [26] optimized the structural parameters
of SICG with 60-mm caliber with ACO. The electrical-tokinetic energy conversion efficiency of the system was
regarded as the target function, while the center-to-center
space between the drive coil and the armature and the
structural parameters of the drive coil and the armature were
regarded as variables. Results of research indicated that the
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Volume 49 No.17, July 2012
electrical-to-kinetic energy conversion efficiency of the
system was improved through parameter optimization.

3.11 Biomedical
The reconstruction of DNA sequences from DNA fragments
is one of the most challenging problems in computational
biology. In recent years the specific problem of DNA
sequencing by hybridization has attracted quite a lot of
interest in the optimization community. Several metaheuristics such as TS and evolutionary algorithms have been
applied to this problem. However, the performance of existing
meta-heuristics is often inferior to the performance of recently
proposed constructive heuristics. On the basis of these new
heuristics the author in [27] developed an ACO algorithm for
DNA sequencing by hybridization. An important feature of
this algorithm is the implementation in a so-called multi-level
framework. The computational results proved that this
algorithm is currently a state-of-the-art method for the tackled
problem.
A Hyper-box clustering with Ant Colony Optimization
(HACO) is addressed in [28] for classifying unlabeled data

using hyper-boxes. c. It acknowledged the topological

information of the data while looking in a small search space,
providing results with high precision in a short time. It is
validated using artificial 2D data sets and then applied to a
real medical data set, automatically extracting medical risk
profiles, a laborious operation for doctors. Clustering results
show an improvement of 36% in accuracy and 7 times faster
processing time when compared to the usual ant colony
optimization approach. It can be further extended to hyperbox shape optimization (fine tune accuracy), automatic
parameter setting (improve usability) and applied to diagnosis
decision support systems.

3.12Summary of the ACO applications

Apart from these applications ACO also addresses the
problems like Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), Vehicle
routing, Sequential ordering, Quadratic assignment, Course
timetabling, Graph coloring, Car sequencing, Multiple
knapsack. Table 1 summarizes the different applications of
ACO which are explained in section 3.

Table 1: Summary of the ACO applications

Domain

Type of the problem solved

Advantages of the Solved Problem

Mobile
and
Wireless
Sensor Networks (WSN)

Target Tracking

Efficient when compared to the target tracking methods considered

for networks with static nodes.

Maximizing the lifetime

nodes
Sensor wakeup control

Network Security
Peer-to-Peer(P2P) & Grid
Computing

of

Applied to a variety of heterogeneous WSNs

free of the problems caused by leader failures and can save the
communication cost for leader selection

Routing
Vulnerability Detection and
Restoration
Trust Evaluation of the Peers

Low Routing Overhead

Lower delay and higher network bandwidth utilization.

Self-organized P2P information

System construction

Information system is efficiently reorganized, thus improving the

efficacy of both simple and range queries.

Scheduling Workflows (QoS)

message for
overhead
is reduced.
Effective
more than
ten workflow applications with at most 120
tasks.
Avoids a large-scale flat flooding and supports multi-attribute range
query

Locating the required resources

Alleviate the negative impact due to the malicious peers

Pervasive Computing

Grid Service reliability

Topology Optimization

Fault recovery on grid service reliability is efficient.

Low Cost (Applications with diverse requirements can be served at
the same time by exploiting the same network infrastructure.)

Computer Architecture

Task Assignment

Data Mining

Classification algorithm.

Feasible task assignment solution and lowers the energy

consumption
Predictive accuracy obtained is statistically significantly higher than
the predictive accuracy of state-of-the-art rule induction
classification.

Image Processing

Power load forecasting using

support vector machine
Edge Detection

Greater forecasting accuracy when compared with single SVM and

BP neural network in short-term load forecasting
Efficient in extracting edges from a digital image.

texture segmentation

Effectiveness and practicability especially for images with complex

local texture situations.

Image Noise Estimation

Provides more accurate noise statistics estimation.

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Volume 49 No.17, July 2012
Software Engineering

Software Project Management

Outperforms the GA, SA and TS approaches on most cases.

Software Project Scheduling

And Staffing

Enables the modeling of resource conflict and task preemption and

preserves the flexibility in human resource allocation.

CPM/PERT networks

ACO can produce good optimal and suboptimal solutions compared

to conventional methods.

Design of flat-gain-spectrum
Raman fiber amplifiers

The proposed method is efficient and stable

Fuzzy Controller Design

Improves the design efficiency and control performance of the chip.

Electrical

Synchronous Induction Coil

guns.

Efficiency of the system was

optimization.

Bio medical

Reconstruction of DNA
sequences from DNA fragments

Currently a state-of-the-art method for the tackled problem.

Medical Risk Profile

Recognition

Provides results with high precision in a short time

Electronics

4.CONCLUSION
In this paper we have given a brief overview of the
applications of ACO in various engineering domains. Not
only in the above mentioned fields, is ACO also used in many
industrial applications. Study of those applications can also
be explored. ACO can also be applied to various unsolved
issues in the emerging fields of Engineering.

5.ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We thank the management and Principal of S.A Engineering
College for giving us constant motivation in enhancing our
technical skills.

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Optimization Approach To A Grid Workflow Scheduling
Problem With Various Qos Requirements,
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[11] Yuhui Deng, Frank Wang, Adrian Ciura, Ant Colony
Optimization Inspired Resource Discovery In P2P Grid
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Min Xie, Grid Service Reliability Modeling and
Optimal Task Scheduling Considering Fault Recovery,
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International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 8887)

Volume 49 No.17, July 2012
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Staffing With an Event-Based Scheduler, IEEE

Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol 99, 2012
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[18] Anna Veronica Baterina, Carlos Oppus , Image Edge

Detection Using Ant Colony Optimization, WSEAS
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[25] Chia-Feng Juang, Chun-Ming Lu, Chiang Lo and ChiYen Wang, Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm for
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[19] Lin Ma, Kuanquan Wang, David Zhang, A Universal

Texture Segmentation And Representation Scheme
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[26] Wenbiao Liu, Cao Yanjie, Yuan Zhang, Jie Wang and
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[20] Jing Tian and Li Chen, Image Noise Estimation Using a

Variation-Adaptive Evolutionary Approach, IEEE
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[27] Christian Blum, Mateu Ybar Valls, Maria J. Blesa ,

An Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm For DNA
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[22]Wei-Neng Chen and Jun Zhang, Ant Colony

Optimization for Software Project Scheduling and

25