Tree-based differential evolution algorithm for QoS multicast routing

Differential evolution (DE) algorithm has attracted more and more attention due to its fast optimization performance and good stability. When DE algorithm is applied into multi-constrained multicast routing optimization problem, a common solution to such problem is to merge the paths into a tree after finding paths from the source node to each destination node. This method maybe obtains the better result, but it can consume a lot of computational time. To solve the problem, a tree-based DE algorithm is introduced in this paper. The central operations of the algorithm are realized with tree structure. This method saves the time of finding paths and integrating them to construct a multicast tree. The experiments show that the proposed algorithm can achieve higher success rate than several common algorithms with much smaller running time for different networks. © 2011 The Journal of China Universities of Posts and Telecommunications.