Improved Quantum-Inspired Evolutionary Algorithm for Network Coding Optimization

It has been proved that network coding, which allows network intermediate nodes to perform processing operations on the incoming packets instead of simply forwarding them, can approach the max-flow min-cut limit of the network graph. But such coding operations in network nodes incur additional computational overhead and consume public resources. Under condition of achieving the desired throughput in multicast scenario, this paper presents an improved quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm (IQEA-NC) to minimize network coding resources. Compared with normal quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm, IQEA-NC can achieve some effective improvements, such as decreasing the search space, increasing global search capacity, and jumping out of local optimum. The simulation experiment results show that IQEA-NC runs faster and more efficiently, improves the optimization performance compared with the existing algorithm.