Timetabling problem solving based on best-nests cuckoo search

Abstract

The university courses timetabling problem (UCTP) is a popular subject among institutions and academics because occurs every academic year. In general, UCTP is the distribution of events through slots time for each room based on the list of constraints for instance (hard constraint and soft constraint) supplied in one semester, intending to avoid conflicts in such assignments. Under no circumstances should hard constraints be broken while attempting to fulfill as many soft constraints as feasible. this article presented a modified best-nests cuckoo search (BNCS) algorithm depend on the base cuckoo search (CS) algorithm. BNSC algorithm was achieved by dividing the nests into two groups (best-nests and normal-nests). The BNCS algorithm selection was limited to the best-nests to generate new solutions. The comparison between BNCS and basic CS based on the experimental result is achieved. For performance evaluation, the BNCS has been tested on four variant-size datasets. It was observed that the BNCS has performed high performance and is faster at finding a solution from CS.