A novel differential evolution algorithm based on periodic intervention and systematic regulation mechanisms

Abstract

Differential evolution (DE) has attracted widespread attention due to its outstanding optimization performance and ease of operation, but it cannot avoid the dilemmas of premature convergence or stagnation when faced with complex optimization problems. To reduce the probability of such difficulties for DE, we sort out the factors that influence the balance between global exploration and local exploitation in the DE algorithm, and we design a novel DE variant (abbreviated as PISRDE) by integrating the corresponding influence factors through a periodic intervention mechanism and a systematic regulation mechanism. The periodic intervention mechanism divides the optimization operations of PISRDE into routine operation and intervention operation, and it balances global exploration and local exploitation at the macro level by executing the two operations alternately. The systematic regulation mechanism treats the involved optimization strategies and parameter settings as an organic system for targeted design, to balance global exploration and local exploitation at the meso or micro level. To evaluate and verify the optimization performance of PISRDE, we employ seven DE variants with excellent optimization performance to conduct comparison experiments on the IEEE CEC 2014 and IEEE CEC 2017 benchmarks. The comparison results indicate that PISRDE outperforms all competitors overall, and its relative advantage is even more significant when dealing with high-dimensional and complex optimization problems.

Schematic design philosophy of PISRDE