Hybridizing Niching, Particle Swarm Optimization, and Evolution Strategy for Multimodal Optimization

IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, vol. 52, pp. 6707–6720

Abstract

Multimodal optimization problems (MMOPs) are common problems with multiple optimal solutions. In this article, a novel method of population division, called nearest-better-neighbor clustering (NBNC), is proposed, which can reduce the risk of more than one species locating the same peak. The key idea of NBNC is to construct the raw species by linking each individual to the better individual within the neighborhood, and the final species of the population is formulated by merging the dominated raw species. Furthermore, a novel algorithm is proposed called NBNC-PSO-ES, which combines the advantages of better exploration in particle swarm optimization (PSO) and stronger exploitation in the covariance matrix adaption evolution strategy (CMA-ES). For the purpose of demonstrating the performance of NBNC-PSO-ES, several state-of-the-art algorithms are adopted for comparisons and tested using typical benchmark problems. The experimental results show that NBNC-PSO-ES performs better than other algorithms.

Authors 5

1. Wenjian Luo

   Harbin Institute of Technology

   Affiliation as printed

   School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China

2. Yingying Qiao

   University of Science and Technology of China

   Affiliation as printed

   School of Computer Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

3. Xin Lin

   University of Science and Technology of China

   Affiliation as printed

   School of Computer Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

4. Peilan Xu

   University of Science and Technology of China

   Affiliation as printed

   School of Computer Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

5. Mike Preuß Aachen Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands