Designing an Object-Oriented Framework for the Variants of Simulated Annealing Algorithm

Simulated Annealing Algorithm의 변형을 지원하기 위한 객체지향 프레임워크 설계

Today, meta-heuristic algorithms have been much attention by researcher because they have the power of solving combinational optimization problems efficiently. As the result, many variants of a meta-heuristic algorithm (e.g., simulated annealing) have been proposed for specific application domains. However, there are few efforts to classify them into a unified software framework, which is believed to provide the users with the reusability of the software, thereby significantly reducing the development time of algorithms. In this paper, we present an object-oriented framework to be used as a general tool for efficiently developing variants of simulated annealing algorithm. The interface classes in the framework achieve the modulization of the algorithm, and the users are allowed to specialize some of the classes appropriate for solving their problems. The core of the framework is Algorithm Configuration Pattern (ACP) which facilitates creating user-specific variants flexibly. Finally, we summarize our experiences and discuss future research topics.