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Discrete Firefly Algorithm: A New Metaheuristic Approach for Solving

Constraint Satisfaction Problems

Conference Paper · July 2018

DOI: 10.1109/CEC.2018.8477823

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 Discrete Firefly Algorithm: A New Metaheuristic
Approach for Solving Constraint Satisfaction
Problems
Mahdi Bidar Malek Mouhoub
Department of Computer Science, Department of Computer Science,
University of Regina University of Regina
Canada
bidar20m@cs.uregina.ca mouhoubm@cs.uregina.ca
Abstract- Constraint Satisfaction Problems are regarded as
NP-Complete problems which solving them with systematic
methods requires exponential time. Firefly algorithm is a
nature inspired algorithm which has been successfully applied
to different combinatorial problems. This paper presents a new
Discrete Firefly Algorithm for Solving Constraint Satisfaction
problems (CSPs) and investigates its applicability for dealing
with such problems. Performance of the proposed method has
been assessed through extensive experiments on CSP instances
generated by Model RB which is a standard mean for
generating CSPs with different tightness. Results of the
experiments in comparison with other methods including
classical methods and other metaheuristic methods clearly
demonstrate the significant performance of proposed discrete
firefly algorithm in dealing with CSPs.
Keywords: Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs);
metaheuristics; evolutionary algorithms.
I. INTRODUCTION
Solving a constraint satisfaction problem refers to find
appropriate assignments of values (as solutions) to problem
variables from variables’ domain so that all constraints of
the problem are satisfied. Any CSP can be formally defined
as follow: a). a set of variables, b). set of finite values as
domain for each variable and c). a set of constraints that
restrict the values that variables can simultaneously take [1].
Dealing with CSPs in appropriate ways has been center of
consideration since almost all real-world problems suffer
from constraints and there for finding appropriate ways to
handle these constrained problems has been of the great
importance. CSPs traditionally have being dealt with
classical systematic methods like Backtrack search is the
most known method in this class. However due to the
exponential cost of systematical method researchers have
been looking for new algorithms for solving CSPs.
Problems like graph coloring problems [2], N-queen
problems [3] as well as real-world applications like
scheduling and planning, configuration, timetabling, gear
train design, tension/compression spring design, pressure
vessel design problem [4] can be considered as the most
well-known constraint satisfaction problems.
CSPs are known to be NP-complete problems, meaning that
solving them with classical methods like systematic search
Samira Sadaoui
Department of Computer Science,
University of Regina
Canada Canada
sadaouis@cs.uregina.ca
requires exponential time cost. A CSP with n variables and
a domain size d, will need a backtrack search algorithm with
O(dn) time complexity in the worst case [1]. As it mentioned
Backtrack search is the most known systematic method for
solving CSPs. However there are some shortcomings with
this method the most important of which is thrashing,
meaning that algorithm cannot identify and remember the
real source of conflict, so repeatedly fails due to the same
reason.
In order to overcome this limitation, constraint propagation
has been proposed and is processed through Look-ahead
strategies including Forward Checking (FC) and
Maintaining Arc Consistency (MAC). These strategies
enable the algorithm to prune those branches that would
otherwise lead to failure. FC enforces a local consistency
between the current variable (the variable that is being
assigned) and the future variables (the non-assigned
variables connected to the current variable via constraints)
to prune earlier those branches of the search tree that will
lead to failure earlier. MAC (also called Full Look Ahead,
or FLA) performs full local consistency on the current and
the future variables. The advantage of MAC is that it also
detects the conflict between future variables and therefore
prunes more branches than FC. This requires however more
time effort than FC [1]. While reducing the size of the
problem space through FC or MAC (by removing some
inconsistent values from the variables domains) helps
improving the time performance of the backtrack search,
this latter still suffers from its exponential time cost
especially for hard to solve problem instances. This is the
main motivation for the research community in this area to
develop new algorithms and take advantages of existing
powerful algorithms like metaheuristics handle these
problems [5].
Metaheuristic algorithms including evolutionary and swarm-
intelligence algorithms have shown successful results when
solving constrained problems [5, 6]. This paper investigates
the applicability of the Firefly algorithm, in dealing with
CSPs. This paper meticulously presents all steps of applying
Firefly algorithm to CSPs which have discrete nature. In
fact the main challenging issue here is to discretize the
Firefly algorithm to be applicable for applying to discrete
problems. While evolutionary techniques such as Genetic
Algorithms (GAs) are generally developed to deal with
discrete problem spaces (like Travelling Salesman
Problem), which make them easily applicable to CSPs, it is
not the case for swarm-intelligence based metaheuristics
like Firefly algorithm. To evaluate the performance of the
proposed algorithm in dealing with CSPs, we have
conducted extensive experiments on problem instances
randomly generated with the known Model RB [7]. The
main advantage of employing Model RB is the ability to
generate hard CSP instances near the phase transition which
are naturally very hard problem to solve (due to many
numbers of constraints need to be satisfied). The results
achieved by proposed algorithm have been compared to FC
and MAC as well as variants of GA-based techniques, in
terms of running time needed to return the solution and the
quality of this latter (measured in number of violated
constraints). The results of the experiments are very
promising and clearly demonstrate the superiority of our
proposed solving method over systematic and GA-based
techniques.
II. RELATED WORK
Genetic algorithms (GAs) are among the most known
nature-inspired algorithms based on Darwinian evolution
and theory of survival of the fittest [9]. It has been shown by
many researchers that GAs are well suited for solving many
optimization problems like scheduling [10, 11] and resource
allocation [12] and multi objective optimization [24]. In [13]
a GA-based method has been proposed for solving CSPs
with a crossover designed as follows. When choosing two
parents for producing offsprings, the number of conflicts is
computed for each gene in both parents (corresponding to an
assignment of a given value to a variable). Genes with the
minimum number of conflicts are then selected. When
applying their proposed method to different randomly
generated CSPs as well as temporal CSPs, the authors
demonstrated the high performance of their improved GA.
In [14], Solnon reports the applicability of Ant Colony
Optimization (ACO) for CSPs. Their main idea was to keep
track of quality areas of problem space by using pheromone.
Information of this pheromone is then used as a heuristic to
guide search for choosing the best values for problem
variables. ACO was inspired by the collective foraging
behavior of real ants. Their indirect communication with
pheromone enables them to find the shortest path between
their nest and food source. This social behavior was
modeled as an optimization algorithm and has been applied
to a wide range of optimization problems such as
scheduling, resource allocation, Traveling Salesman
Problem (TSP), graph coloring and vehicle routing.
In [15], the authors applied a Particle Swarm Optimization
(PSO) algorithm to CSPs. The velocity parameter of the
algorithm is computed based on the information about
conflicts between variables. The authors also proposed new
PSO operators such as subtraction, addition and
multiplication for the purpose of solving CSPs. In order to
improve the performance of the PSO, the authors improved
the no-hope/re-hope mechanism introduced in [17]. This
latter is used to identify particles that have been stuck in
local optimum trap, in order to relocate them randomly to
other locations of the problem space so the algorithm get
going again. And also authors of [22] proposed firefly
algorithm for graph coloring problem. Their algorithm takes
advantages of swap local search heuristic. Due to the
discrete nature of the graph coloring problems, they changed
the algorithm to be able to deal with discrete problem spaces
(containing permutation of values). In fact their main
contribution is to hybridization of firefly with swap local
search to improve the quality of the solution through local
search.
III. THE FIREFLY ALGORITHM
Proposed by Yang in [5], the Firefly algorithm is one of the
well-known nature-inspired algorithms inspired by social
behavior of special flashing insect namely Firefly in nature.
These flies can be especially seen in the sky during summer
nights emitting light for communication with other fireflies
or attracting matting partners and to allure and hunt prey.
Fireflies are attracted to the brighter ones and move toward
them. Their attractiveness is proportional to their brightness,
the brighter a Firefly is the more attractive he is (its light
intensity) which however decreases with the distance. In
case there is no brighter Firefly, they move stochastically.
The light intensity I of fireflies decreases as r increases in
terms of I / r2. Furthermore, air has impact on the intensity
of their light and absorbs it and makes it weak. These two
factors have negative impact on the fireflies’ vision and
limit it. The Firefly algorithm is one of the most well-known
nature-inspired optimization algorithms that can be applied
to a large variety of non-trivial optimization problems.
Features of firefly algorithm are described as follows.
random() is a vector of uniformly distributed random
numbers [0,1). Features of Firefly algorithm are tabulated in
Table I.
Table I. FEATURES OF FIREFLY ALGORITHM
FEATURES EQUATIONS
Distance: Distance between solutions i
and j at locations xi and xj respectively, is
measured by following equation (k is the (1)
subscript of the spatial component of xi
and xj):
Attractiveness (β): it is proportional to
distance r, absorption coefficient
𝛾 and I0 the light intensity at (2)
𝛾
source that can be defined as I0 = f(xi) or
I0 =1.
Movement: Firefly i moves toward
brighter Firefly j (at xi and xj) following
(3)
Equation (3). Here, 𝛼 is the size 𝛼
of the random step.
Stochastic Movement of the brightest
Firefly at location xmin. (4)
The brightness of the fireflies, representing the solution
quality, is calculated with a fitness function that is defined
according to the problem being solved [5, 23]. The
brightest Firefly is the optimal solution [16].
IV. PROPOSED DISCRETE FIREFLY ALGORITHM
FOR SOLVING CSPs
The standard firefly algorithm is a nature-inspired swarm
intelligence based algorithm which has been introduced to
deal with continues optimization problems ( ). To
apply it to discrete optimization problems, all the features of
the algorithm must be well adapted to be able to deal with
discrete spaces ( ) which is the space of all possible
combinations of variables values (discrete chromosome-like
solutions). This process requires redefining all the steps and
features of the Firefly algorithm including initialization the
population (generating discrete initial solutions), the
distance between discrete solutions, the attractiveness and
the movement features. The steps of discretization of the
Firefly algorithm are presented below.
A. Solution Formation (discrete solutions)
In the proposed DFA, the set of randomly assigned values to
problem’s variables form the initial population. In standard
firefly algorithm, initial population is the set of randomly
generated locations in the continuous problem space or the
values associated to these randomly generated locations
generated by respective fitness function (objective function).
Figure 1 indicates an instance of the graph coloring problem
and Figure 2 shows its corresponding CSP solution.
Variables: {V1, V2, V3, V4, V5, V6}, Domain: {r, g, b, y},
Constraint: No two adjacent variables with the same color.
Fig 1. Example of the graph coloring problem.
Fig 2. CSP potential solution.
B. Fitness Function
Due to the fact that our main objective is to find a solution
which violates none of the constraints, we defined a fitness
function which measures the number of the violated
constraints solutions. The generated value through the
fitness function is considered as quality of each solution.
Respective equations are:
(5)
(6)
Here NC is the total number of constraints and
checks if solution s satisfies
constraint i or not. The goal is to minimize the number of
violated constraints in an evolutionary process until,
hopefully, all constraints are satisfied. Given a solutions
to our graph coloring problem, the
corresponding fitness functions is calculated as shown in
Figure 3.
Fig 3. Solution with 2 violated constraints.
C. Updating Solutions
The process of updating solutions is performed through
several steps listed below.
 Distance
Distance between solutions in standard firefly algorithm is
calculated through equation 1 (Cartesian distance of two
fireflies) which is appropriate mean to deal with continuous
problem spaces. To deal with discrete problem spaces we
propose employing Hamming distance [18, 19]. Given two
solutions Sk and Sl, the Hamming distance Hd( , ) is the
number of variables in Sk and Sl that have different values.
It is calculated as shown in Equations 7 and 8.
(7)
(8)
Here, nvar is the
number of variables and
checks if sk(i) and sl(i) share
the same value or not. Considering solution s1 and s2 in
Figure 4, they differ in two variables, so Hd( , .
The swap distance can be applied to those problems where
spaces consist of possible permutations of values which is
not the case for CSPs.
Fig 4. Hamming distance between and . a.
 Attractiveness
From the Equation 3 it can be deduced that β controls the
convergence rate of the algorithm, meaning that larger value
of β causes the faster convergence of the fireflies to a local
optimum solution and convergence to a solution means
sharing the same quantities with that solution. To carry the
same attribute from continuous Firefly to discrete Firefly the
β parameter must be defined with care. In the proposed
DFA, β is considered as the probability of replacing a
parameter value with a new one [20]. The behavior of β for
increasing the distance from 1 to 100 when I0=1 and γ=0.4
is depicted in Figure 5.
Fig 5. Behavior of the β for increasing distance from 1 to 100 when I0=1
and γ=0.4.
From Figure 5, it can be seen that β changes from 1 to 10-3
when the distance changes from 0 to 100. In CSPs to fit this
definition, the more identical values must be shared to move
from one solution to another solution to reduce the distance
(according to the definition of distance and fitness functions
for CSPs).
According to this definition, β is proposed to be considered
as the probability of changing the value of a variable in
weaker Firefly with the value of the corresponding variable
in the brighter Firefly. So the bigger the β is the more likely
the weaker solution is to replace its variables values by the
corresponding variables values of the better solution. For
instance β=0.4 determines a probability equal to 0.4 for
replacing the values of a solution with the values of the
better ones.
 Movement
In converting continuous Firefly to discrete Firefly the most
important step to take is to adopt its movement to suit the
discrete problem spaces. Preserving all the features of the
movement of Firefly algorithm including exploitation and
exploration features is of the great importance and all must
be reflected with care to the discrete version of the
algorithm. Exploitation refers to local movement toward
local optimum solutions while exploration refers to
movement of the algorithm toward the global best solution.
Local Movement (exploitation)
Fitting the definition of the local movement of the fireflies,
the movement of a Firefly toward the brighter one in
discrete problem spaces implies sharing more values with
the brighter Firefly by the weaker firefly. From Equation (3)
one can speculate that convergence rate of fireflies is
controlled by β. In fact β encourages exploitation of the
algorithm and brings them together. According to above
facts we need to define new local movement to suit the
discrete problem spaces (to bring fireflies together in
discrete problem spaces). β movement of solution sk towards
solution sl in a discrete problem space follows Equation 9.
(9)
rnd is a uniformly generated random number between [0,1].
Through Equation 9, if the generated random number is
smaller than β then the values of the better solution (sl)
replace the corresponding variable value of the weaker
solution (sk) otherwise that value remains unchanged.
Equation 9 applied to those variables of weaker firefly that
have different values with their corresponding variables in
the better firefly. The steps for this discrete movement for
the given solutions s1 and s2 with F(s1)=2 and F(s2)=1 are
stated below.
1. Find the variables that share the same value. These values
will definitely remain unchanged in less brighter Firefly.
S2= r b g r b b
S1= r g r b
2. For filling the gaps considering the β value (probability
value between [0,1]), two different cases may happen:
 With probability β, the value of the corresponding
variable in the better solution is chosen to fill a gap in
less quality solution.
 With probability 1- β, a gap is not filled by the value of
the corresponding variable of the better solution. In this
case, this gap will be filled by the previous value. For
example, when filling the first gap in s1 we have:
S1= r b g r b
S1= r r g r b
This step continues until all gaps are filled.
 b. Global Movement (Exploration)
One challenge when using metaheuristics for solving
combinatorial problems is dealing with local optimum traps.
One way to address this issue is to perform a mutation as a
random search. After filling all gaps, the mutation operator
is applied to the complete assignments. We consider the
following random mutations.
 Random Resetting Mutation (RRM): RRM assigns
random values from variable domains to randomly
chosen variables. RRM is an appropriate method for
problem spaces consist of lists or string of arbitrary
elements like integer values. The main advantage of
this method is reachability, meaning that every point in
the problem space can be reached from any arbitrary
solution in the problem space, there for using this
method diversified solutions can be produced. As we
know, diversity has significant impact on the
performance of the metaheuristic algorithms.
 Swap Mutation (SwM): Through SwM values of two
randomly selected variables are interchanged.
 Scramble Mutation (ScM): Through this method a
subset of values are selected and their values are
shuffled or scrambled randomly.
 Inversion Mutation (IM): Through this method values
of a randomly chosen subset of variables are inverted.
The proposed discrete Firefly algorithm is presented in
Algorithm 1.
Input
m,γ,α,I //problem constants
maxGen //maximum number of generations
Output: xmin //best solution (with minimum violated constraints)
For i=1:m
xi= initialSolution() //Generate m random solutions
Endfori
For Count=1:maxGen
Update the best solution found so far
For i=1:m
For j=i+1:m
If Fitness (si) < Fitness (sj)
Determine distance ri,j
Determine attractiveness β
β Movement(sj , si) // Move sj toward si
Mutation
Endif
Endforj
Endfori
Apply Mutation to the best solution
EndforCount
Algorithm 1. The proposed Discrete Firefly Algorithm (DFA) for CSPs.
V. EXPERIMENTATION
A. Problem Instances and Experimentation Environment
We have employed Model RB (which is the standard and
most frequently used mean by researchers in this area) to
randomly generate CSP instances to run our experiments on
them. Due to having exact phase transition one can use it to
generate hard to solve instances [7, 21]. The main
parameters of Model RB which require to be set in order to
generate different CSP instances are n, p, α and r. Here n is
the number of variables, p (0 < p < 1) is the constraint
tightness, and r and α (0 < r, α < 1) are two positive user
defined constants [7, 21]. The procedure used by Model RB
is briefly stated as follow:
1. Select with repetition random constraints.
Randomly selected non-repeated pairs of variables (2 of n
variables) form constraints of the problem [21].
2. For each constraint uniformly select pd2 incompatible
pairs of values from variables’ domains without repetition,
where d = nα is the domain size of each variable [21].
3. All the variables have the same domain corresponding to
the first d natural numbers (0 ... d−1). According to [7], pt is
the phase transition of the CSP instances which is calculated
as follows: pt = 1 − e −α/r. Solvable problems are therefore
generated with p < pt.
In fact Model RB simulates constrained problems that suffer
from restrictions on their variables, meaning values that can
be assigned to their variables simultaneously are restricted
which narrow the acceptable solutions. In the other words, it
generates constraints for pairs of problem variables. These
constraints do not let the problem to take some values of its
domain. CSP instances for assessing the performance of the
proposed DFA are generated through Model RB
implemented by authors. Generated CSP instances to be
used in our experiments have different properties. They
have tightness ranging from 0.05 to 0.6 and different
number of variables (75 and 100). CSPs with higher
tightness are more difficult problems to solve and problems
with 0.6 are problems close to phase transition which are the
most difficult CSP instances to solve. All the methods in the
experiments (Model RB as well) have been implemented by
MATLAB R2010a and all experiments have been
performed on a PC with Intel Core i7 1.6 GHz processor
and 1GB RAM.
B. Test Results
Our proposed DFA is compared to different Genetic
Algorithms (GAs) as well as classical methods including
Backtrack search, FC and MAC. We investigate the
performance of the proposed DFA in terms of running time
(Second), Success Rate (SR, the percentage of the
experiments an algorithm returns a complete solution),
Number of Violated Constraints (NVC) and also the
Number of Constraint Checks (NCC). The parameters of the
proposed DFA are tuned to their best by trial and error, and
their values are as follow: γ=0.009 and population size =
30. Figure 6 indicates the convergence trend of the proposed
DFA to the best solutions (in term of NVC). The significant Tables II and III report results of experiments on CSP
point that can be seen from Figure 6 is the ability of the instances with 75 and 100 variables respectively, and
proposed DFA to converge to the best solution very soon in tightness ranging from 0.05 to 0.6. The results of these
all experiments, which proves the high performance and experiments, reported in Tables II and III, show that SwM,
applicability of the proposed method. The running time is ScM and IM mutations are better operators than RRM in
the time that DFA finds the best solution. Referring to terms of running time and NCC. Also, the overall results are
Figure 6, the last two experiments (c and d) correspond to very promising and in all experiments the proposed DFA is
the hardest instances to solve. DFA was however successful successful in finding complete solutions (0 violated
in finding the best solutions in 11 iterations. In order to find constraints). Although instances with tightness equal 0.6 are
the most effective of the four mutation methods we reported the most hard to solve, the proposed method dealt very
in the previous Section, we conducted several comparative effectively with that and achieved the best result in very
experiments using the following settings. acceptable amount of time. It is worth mentioning that
diversification has significant impact on the performance of
 RRM the metaheuristics and enables the search algorithm to
 Generate a random number in [1 ... n], (α). access diverse areas of the search space thanks to the
 Choose randomly α variables. random mutation operators. According to our discussion,
 Assign random values from variable domains to the more diverse solutions one algorithm can produce the
chosen variables. higher performance that algorithm would have and so the
more likely that would be to find the best solution. To
further investigate the performance of the proposed DFA,
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 1 5 3 7
we conducted comparative experiments and report the
results in Tables IV (comparison with backtrack search
 SwM methods) and V (comparison with the modified GAs
 Choose randomly two variables. presented in [13]). The IM operator is used for our DFA
 Exchange the values of chosen variables. algorithm as it has the best results according to Tables II and
III. In Table IV, we observe that increasing the tightness
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 7 4 5 6 3 corresponds to a significant increase of the systematic
search methods (BT, FC and MAC). The results reported in
 ScM Table V are averaged over 20 run and SR and NVC. The
 Select randomly a subset of variables. different types of GAs considered are listed below [13].
 Values of selected variables are shuffled or
scrambled randomly.  MPC: GA with Multi Parent Crossover
 OPC: Standard GA with One Point Crossover
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 6 3 4 5 7  PSC: GA with Parental Success Crossover
 HPGA+PSC: Hierarchical Parallel Genetic Algorithm + PSC
 HPGA+GM+PSC: HPGA + proposed GM + PSC
 IM
 Select randomly a subset of variables.
 Invert values of selected variables. From Table V, we can see that all the DFA variants,
including different mutation operators, achieved the best
results in all experiments with the highest SR (100%) and
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 6 5 4 3 7 with no violated constraints. The second best method is the
HPGA+GM+PSC.

a) Tightness=0.45, Running Time=57.8270, Number of Iterations=10 b) Tightness=0.5, Running Time=77.0032, Number of Iterations=11
 c) Tightness=0.55, Running Time=70.7841, Number of Iterations=11 d) Tightness=0.6, Running Time=93.7050, Number of Iterations=11
Fig 6. Convergence trend of the proposed DFA in dealing with different CSPs.

Table II. COMPARATIVE RESULTS ACHIEVED BY DIFFERENT DFA ON PROBLEMS WITH 75 VARIABLES.
RRM SwM ScM IM
Tightness Time(S) NVC NCC Time(S) NVC NCC Time(S) NVC NCC Time(S) NVC NCC
0.05 1.0097 0 611520 0.9821 0 667680 0.8755 0 606320 0.1328 0 527800
0.1 2.3613 0 1493700 1.0827 0 1309620 1.6761 0 1294020 2.3234 0 1325220
0.15 5.5889 0 3417700 6.2942 0 3413800 4.6584 0 2965300 4.2011 0 3266900
0.2 9.4845 0 4402320 6.8630 0 4037280 6.8821 0 4230720 6.8909 0 4082520
0.25 15.5502 0 7390240 13.5648 0 6926400 13.0318 0 6597760 14.3287 0 7109440
0.3 14.5899 0 7593300 13.1114 0 7291440 15.5877 0 8358480 15.8732 0 8129160
0.35 22.0229 0 10813660 23.1066 0 10930920 19.6665 0 10690680 19.6610 0 9375080
0.4 25.9733 0 13080600 23.1061 0 12570220 28.1147 0 13547040 23.8448 0 12634440
0.45 31.4167 0 15328040 22.3143 0 14782040 29.8390 0 14683760 24.0635 0 13289640
0.5 36.9495 0 18224960 30.9351 0 16165760 33.5972 0 17239040 34.4612 0 17368000
0.55 39.9539 0 19319820 38.4928 0 19213740 33.1907 0 17719780 46.0355 0 20685600
0.6 44.2037 0 22526400 42.2222 0 21469240 44.1054 0 22990760 44.5170 0 21582860

Table III. COMPARATIVE RESULTS ACHIEVED BY DIFFERENT DFA ON PROBLEMS WITH 100 VARIABLES.
RRM SwM ScM IM
Tightness Time(S) NVC NCC Time(S) NVC NCC Time(S) NVC NCC Time(Sec) NVC NCC
0.05 1.2140 0 1031136 0.4979 0 933984 1.0575 0 886144 1.1287 0 1046592
0.1 7.1269 0 3431232 3.3484 0 3548992 4.7470 0 2777664 6.0216 0 3448896
0.15 14.9180 0 7187040 12.6580 0 7074432 12.1084 0 6884544 8.4188 0 6345792
0.2 22.8456 0 10919296 21.3834 0 11031168 22.2462 0 10754432 17.6288 0 9261824
0.25 33.6261 0 14767840 31.6439 0 15982240 27.4681 0 15422880 27.6144 0 13685920
0.3 41.8278 0 18635520 36.9684 0 18268992 41.6499 0 19386240 37.5286 0 18096768
0.35 50.9483 0 22158752 49.3887 0 25038720 45.0875 0 21236544 47.8664 0 22957312
0.4 60.5928 0 26654976 56.0323 0 26837504 60.8819 0 28386048 56.7365 0 25966080
0.45 82.9892 0 34418304 87.0223 0 35345664 57.8270 0 33278976 74.2197 0 34345440
0.5 88.6096 0 39140480 80.1186 0 37271040 77.0032 0 37329920 76.7654 0 36814720
0.55 103.2232 0 48130720 88.5592 0 41241024 70.7841 0 36019104 90.9472 0 39710880
0.6 103.1124 0 46438656 97.6594 0 46906752 93.7050 0 47604480 98.9651 0 44769408

Table IV. RESULTS ON CSPs WITH DIFFERENT TIGHTNESS AND WITH 100 VARIABLES.
DFA BT FC MAC
Tightness Time(S) NVC NCC Time (S) NVC NCC Time(S) NVC NCC Time(S) NVC NCC
0.05 1.1287 0 1046592 1.5447 0 1602272 1.1769 0 1443296 0.4468 0 1441824
0.1 6.0216 0 3448896 9.3705 0 5933632 9.4333 0 6462080 5.1778 0 5056320
0.15 8.4188 0 6345792 20.3215 0 11516928 16.4282 0 10945056 15.3742 0 10794912
0.2 17.6288 0 9261824 40.0673 0 17234176 39.4435 0 17307776 26.3828 0 16236160
0.25 27.6144 0 13685920 49.5232 0 30177840 47.1757 0 31462160 39.3856 0 22852800
0.3 37.5286 0 18096768 91.0679 0 38200608 61.4103 0 37776672 56.7726 0 38160864
0.35 47.8664 0 22957312 141.9691 0 49709072 101.6795 0 46983664 100.7832 0 43150576
0.4 56.7365 0 25966080 158.8545 0 59819136 149.8388 0 55414912 124.5321 0 56150912
0.45 74.2197 0 34345440 196.6887 0 66256560 148.4843 0 64812528 145.7612 0 63017424
0.5 76.7654 0 36814720 306.4860 0 82347360 198.8774 0 74199840 165.9458 0 69356960
0.55 90.9472 0 39710880 296.9602 0 83214736 239.3077 0 82898992 213.9627 0 82121776
0.6 98.9651 0 44769408 416.1118 0 94153536 323.0191 0 91636416 252.5353 0 87776832

Table V. RESULTS ACHIEVED BY DIFFERENT DFA and DIFFERENT GAs ON CSPs WITH 100 VARIABLES.
DFA+RRM DFA+SwM DFA+ScM DFA+IM HPGA+PSC HPGA+GM+PSC MPC OPC PSC
Tightness SR, NVC SR, NVC SR, NVC SR, NVC SR, NVC SR, NVC SR, NVC SR, NVC SR, NVC
 0.05 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100% 100%, 0 100%, 0
0.1 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100% 100%, 0 100%, 0
0.15 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 0, 4 100%, 0 100%, 0
0.2 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 0, 9 27%, 0 100%, 0
0.25 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 0, 17 0, 3 100%, 0
0.3 100% ,0 100% ,0 100% ,0 100% ,0 100% ,0 100% ,0 0, 25 0, 5 100%, 0
0.35 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 0, 28 0, 10 100%, 0
0.4 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 0, 37 0, 12 62%, 0
0.45 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 0, 45 0, 27 0, 5
0.5 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 0, 53 0, 30 0, 9
0.55 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 73%, 0 100%, 0 0, 69 0, 42 0, 15
0.6 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 100%, 0 0, 3 79%, 0 0, 78 0, 62 0, 17

It solved all CSPs with tightness p= 0.05 to p=0.55 with
SR=100% and CSPs with p=0.6 with SR=79%.
HPGA+PSC method also performed well and solved all
problems with tightness p= 0.05 to p=0.5 with SR=100%
and CSPs with p=0.55 with SR=73%. The best result it
achieved when dealing with instances having p=0.6 was a
solution with NVC=3.
VI. Conclusion
In this paper, we proposed a new Discrete Firefly algorithm,
that we call DFA, for dealing with CSPs. In order to prevent
the proposed method from being trapped in local optimum,
we consider several random mutation methods. To assess
the real performance of the proposed DFA, we conducted
extensive experiments on randomly generated CSP
instances. The results are very promising and clearly
demonstrate the superiority of our proposed solving method
over systematic and GA-based techniques. In the near
future, we plan to evaluate the performance of our method
on real world discrete decision and optimization problems.
We will also explore the possibility of running our
algorithm in parallel as done with GAs in [13].
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