Airport Flight Gate Assignment with PSO Meta-heuristic Algorithm

Airports are considered as a main point for transporting passengers and goods. Meanwhile gates are the primary source, supplying service for passenger’s arrival and departure. The elaboration of airport operations and flight rates to major airports and their traffic caused gate assignment problem (GAP) has a particular importance. In this research, based on previous studies and different solution methods, tried to offer a model to assign the flight gates in the best possible way with considering existence constraints. The objectives of this study is based on declining passengers walking distance, reducing delays caused by gate occupation and decreasing each gate work time deviation from mean time of all gates to proper allotting flight activities. The proposed model can be used before initiating program or failure. The model ability was assessed, once in small size (comparing the results of Lingo with PSO algorithm in MATLAB), and once again in the real dimensions of data in Mehrabad Airport (comparing PSO algorithm in MATLAB response results with manually assigned), and it was investigated to present results from lower cost which represented improving goals in a reasonable time.