Discrete crow-inspired algorithms for traveling salesman problem

Crow search algorithm is one of bio-inspired optimization algorithms which is essentially derived for solving continuous based optimization problems. Although many main-frame discrete optimizers are available, they still have some performance challenges. This paper proposes three discrete crow inspired algorithms for enhancing the performance of the original crow search algorithm when it is applied for solving discrete traveling salesman problems. The proposed algorithms are derived based on modular arithmetic, basic operators and dissimilar solutions techniques. Each technique guarantees switching from continuous spaces into discrete spaces without losing information. Such algorithms are called Modular Arithmetic, Basic Operators, and Dissimilar Solutions algorithms. For evaluating their performance, the proposed algorithms are compared with the most state-of-the-art discrete optimizers for solving 111 instances of traveling salesman problems. Simulation results illustrate that, the performance of the proposed algorithms is much better than the performance of most state-of-the-art discrete optimizers in terms of the average optimal solutions accuracy, the average errors from the optimal solutions and the average of computational time.