Network Design Problem Using Genetic Algorithm-an Empirical Study on Mutation Operator

This study presents an influence of mutation operator in genetic algorithm for small to large network design problem. A network design problem for this study falls under the network topology category which is a minimum spanning tree with various types of constraint which makes it NP-hard problem. Mutation operator plays an important role in genetic algorithm approach. Since many researchers have tried to solve this problem for small to mid size, we have explored the use of genetic algorithm with various mutation functions with modification but without changing the nature of genetic algorithm. Various mutation functions have been developed here as per the requirement of the problem and applied with the various size of network. In this study we have tried to show that how mutation functions affects the performance of genetic algorithm and also shown that GA is an alternative solution for this NP-hard problem.