Extended Physarum Solver for Capacity-Constraint Routing

Physarum solver (PS), which is inspired by the foraging behavior of Physarum polycephalum, has been attracting attention as a metaheuristic for solving optimization problems such as finding the shortest path. However, it could not solve optimization problems such as routing with link capacity constraint due to the lack of the link capacity concept in the PS. To address this problem, this paper introduces an extended Physarum solver (EPS) that can recognize and maintain link bandwidth resources. The EPS makes minimal changes to the existing PS adaptive equations but enhances the PS to solve optimization problems involving capacity-constraint routing by introducing the concept of link capacity. Experiments with various traffic scenarios show that the EPS achieves the optimal routing and further extends the link capacity of the PS. It was also confirmed that the EPS is consistent with the existing research. This suggests that metaheuristics based on the foraging behavior of Physarum polycephalum can be promising solutions to optimization problems in communication networks.