Study on an improved adaptive PSO algorithm for solving multi-objective gate assignment

Gate is a key resource in the airport, which can realize rapid and safe docking, ensure the effective connection between flights and improve the capacity and service efficiency of airport. The minimum walking distances of passengers, the minimum idle time variance of each gate, the minimum number of flights at parking apron and the most reasonable utilization of large gates are selected as the optimization objectives, then an efficient multi-objective optimization model of gate assignment problem is proposed in this paper. Then an improved adaptive particle swarm optimization(DOADAPO) algorithm based on making full use of the advantages of Alpha-stable distribution and dynamic fractional calculus is deeply studied. The dynamic fractional calculus with memory characteristic is used to reflect the trajectory information of particle updating in order to improve the convergence speed. The Alpha-stable distribution theory is used to replace the uniform distribution in order to escape from the local minima in a certain probability and improve the global search ability. Next, the DOADAPO algorithm is used to solve the constructed multi-objective optimization model of gate assignment in order to fast and effectively assign the gates to different flights in different time. Finally, the actual flight data in one domestic airport is used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The experiment results show that the DOADAPO algorithm can improve the convergence speed and enhance the local search ability and global search ability, and the multi-objective optimization model of gate assignment can improve the comprehensive service of gate assignment. It can effectively provide a valuable reference for assigning the gates in hub airport. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.