A Tabu Search Evolutionary Algorithm for Solving Constraint Satisfaction Problems

The paper introduces a hybrid Tabu Search-Evolutionary Algorithm for solving the constraint satisfaction problem, called STLEA. Extensive experimental fine-tuning of parameters of the algorithm was performed to optimise the performance of the algorithm on a commonly used test-set. The performance of the STLEA was then compared to the best known evolutionary algorithm and benchmark deterministic and non-deterministic algorithms. The comparison shows that the STLEA improves on the performance of the best known evolutionary algorithm but can not achieve the efficiency of the deterministic algorithms.