An Adaptive Covariance Scaling Estimation of Distribution Algorithm

Qiang Yang, Yong Li, Xu-Dong Gao, Yuan-Yuan Ma, Zhen-Yu Lu, Sang-Woon Jeon and Jun Zhang
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Qiang Yang: School of Artificial Intelligence, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
Yong Li: School of Artificial Intelligence, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
Xu-Dong Gao: School of Artificial Intelligence, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
Yuan-Yuan Ma: College of Computer and Information Engineering, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang 453007, China
Zhen-Yu Lu: School of Artificial Intelligence, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
Sang-Woon Jeon: Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Hanyang University, Ansan 15588, Korea
Jun Zhang: Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Hanyang University, Ansan 15588, Korea

Mathematics, 2021, vol. 9, issue 24, 1-38

Abstract: Optimization problems are ubiquitous in every field, and they are becoming more and more complex, which greatly challenges the effectiveness of existing optimization methods. To solve the increasingly complicated optimization problems with high effectiveness, this paper proposes an adaptive covariance scaling estimation of distribution algorithm (ACSEDA) based on the Gaussian distribution model. Unlike traditional EDAs, which estimate the covariance and the mean vector, based on the same selected promising individuals, ACSEDA calculates the covariance according to an enlarged number of promising individuals (compared with those for the mean vector). To alleviate the sensitivity of the parameters in promising individual selections, this paper further devises an adaptive promising individual selection strategy for the estimation of the mean vector and an adaptive covariance scaling strategy for the covariance estimation. These two adaptive strategies dynamically adjust the associated numbers of promising individuals as the evolution continues. In addition, we further devise a cross-generation individual selection strategy for the parent population, used to estimate the probability distribution by combing the sampled offspring in the last generation and the one in the current generation. With the above mechanisms, ACSEDA is expected to compromise intensification and diversification of the search process to explore and exploit the solution space and thus could achieve promising performance. To verify the effectiveness of ACSEDA, extensive experiments are conducted on 30 widely used benchmark optimization problems with different dimension sizes. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed ACSEDA presents significant superiority to several state-of-the-art EDA variants, and it preserves good scalability in solving optimization problems.

Keywords: estimation of distribution algorithm; covariance scaling; gaussian distribution; meta-heuristic algorithm; problem optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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