A two-stage differential biogeography-based optimization algorithm and its performance analysis

Biogeography-based optimization (BBO), a recent proposed metaheuristic algorithm, has been successfully applied to many optimization problems due to its simplicity and efficiency. However, BBO is sensitive to the curse of dimensionality; its performance degrades rapidly as the dimensionality of the search space increases. In this paper, a selective migration operator is proposed to scale up the performance of BBO and we name it selective BBO (SBBO). The differential migration operator is selected heuristically to explore the global area as far as possible whist the normal distributed migration operator is chosen to exploit the local area. By the means of heuristic selection, an appropriate migration operator can be used to search the global optimum efficiently. Moreover, the strategy of cooperative coevolution (CC) is adopted to solve large-scale global optimization problems (LSOPs). To deal with subgroup imbalance contribution to the whole solution in the context of CC, a more efficient computing resource allocation is proposed. Extensive experiments are conducted on the CEC 2010 benchmark suite for large-scale global optimization, and the results show the effectiveness and efficiency of SBBO compared with BBO variants and other representative algorithms for LSOPs. Also, the results confirm that the proposed computing resource allocation is vital to the large-scale optimization within the limited computation budget.

Recent trend of research is to hybridize two and more metaheuristics algorithms to obtain superior solution in the field of optimization problems. This paper proposes a newly developed wrapper‐based feature selection method based on the hybridization of Biogeography Based Optimization (BBO) and Sine Cosine Algorithm (SCA) for handling feature selection problems. The position update mechanism of SCA algorithm is introduced into the BBO algorithm to enhance the diversity among the habitats. In BBO, the mutation operator is got rid of and instead of it, a position update mechanism of SCA algorithm is applied after the migration operator, to enhance the global search ability of Basic BBO. This mechanism tends to produce the highly fit solutions in the upcoming iterations, which results in the improved diversity of habitats. The performance of this Improved BBO (IBBO) algorithm is investigated using fourteen benchmark datasets. Experimental results of IBBO are compared with eight other search algorithms. The results show that IBBO is able to outperform the other algorithms in majority of the datasets. Furthermore, the strength of IBBO is proved through various numerical experiments like statistical analysis, convergence curves, ranking methods, and test functions. The results of the simulation have revealed that IBBO has produced very competitive and promising results, compared to the other search algorithms.

As an essential factor of evolutionary algorithms (EAs), mutation operator plays an important role in exploring the search space, maintaining the diversity of individuals and breaking away local optimums. In most standard evolutionary algorithms, the mutation operator is independent from the recombination operator. Nevertheless, in biogeography-based optimization (BBO), the mutation operator is affected not only by predefined constants but also by recombination models, namely the migration operator. However to date, the relationship between the mutation and migration has never been investigated. To reveal the relationship and evaluate the mutation models, we utilize drift analysis to investigate the expected first hitting time of BBO with different migration models. The analysis compares three different kinds of mutation models in a mathematical way and the conclusion is helpful for designing migration models of BBO. The simulation results are also in agreement with our analysis.

Biogeography-based optimization (BBO) is a population-based evolutionary algorithm that is based on the mathematics of biogeography. Biogeography is the science and study of the geographical distribution of biological organisms. In BBO, problem solutions are analogous to islands, and the sharing of features between solutions is analogous to the migration of species. This paper derives Markov models for BBO with selection, migration, and mutation operators. Our models give the theoretically exact limiting probabilities for each possible population distribution for a given problem. We provide simulation results to confirm the Markov models.

A new Biogeography-based Optimization (BBO) algorithm for detecting community in complex network science has been proposed. It adopts integral matrix encoding that each element represents the community index of the corresponding node. The migration operator and the mutation operator are the fundamental process to improve the accuracy and the quality of community detection. Each individual in the habitat can exchange information with other individuals by immigrating or emigrating. And the exchange among individuals will change the integral matrix value that closely connects with community index. In this paper, network modularity function is chosen as its suitability function, which to measure the quality of the community structure. The quality and effectiveness of the BBO algorithm are exposed in experimental tests by using artificial random network and real networks. The accuracy of BBO algorithm is batter to that of some classic algorithms, and is comparable to that of some latest algorithms.

For sharing the information between solutions, biogeography based optimization (BBO) procedure uses migration operator based on biogeography. Differential evolution (DE) is another well-organized, robust and most common evolutionary procedure for solving global optimization problems. We have implemented BBO with DE algorithm and proposes a new efficient approach namely BBO/DE. To generate an effective candidate solution BBO/DE hybridize the BBO with the DE effectively and the BBO migration operators are adjusted on the basis of iteration count to enhance the performance. To certify the effectiveness of our suggested approach, we have used 6 benchmark functions and applied our proposed solution. From the comparison results it can be induced that the suggested methodology is effective and efficient both in comparison to traditional BBO and DE.

Improved biogeography-based optimization with random ring topology and Powell's method

Two defects of biogeography‐based optimization (BBO) are found out by analyzing the characteristics of its dominant migration operator. One is that, due to global topology and direct‐copying migration strategy, information in several good‐quality habitats tends to be copied to the whole habitats rapidly, which would lead to premature convergence. The other is that the generated solutions by migration process are distributed only in some specific regions so that many other areas where competitive solutions may exist cannot be investigated. To remedy the former, a new migration operator precisely developed by modifying topology and copy mode is introduced to BBO. Additionally, diversity mechanism is proposed. To remedy the latter defect, quantitative orthogonal learning process accomplished based on space quantizing and orthogonal design is proposed. It aims to investigate the feasible region thoroughly so that more competitive solutions can be obtained. The effectiveness of the proposed approaches is verified on a set of benchmark functions with diverse characteristics. The experimental results reveal that the proposed method has merits regarding solution quality, convergence performance, and so on, compared with basic BBO, five BBO variant algorithms, seven orthogonal learning‐based algorithms, and other non‐OL‐based evolutionary algorithms. The effects of each improved component are also analyzed.

Remote sensing image classification in recent years has been a proliferating area of global research for obtaining geo-spatial information from satellite data. In Biogeography Based Optimization (BBO), knowledge sharing between candidate problem solutions or habitats depends on the migration mechanisms of the ecosystem. In this paper an extension to Biogeography Based-Optimization is proposed for image classification by incorporating the non-linear migration model into the evolutionary process. It is observed in recent literature that sinusoidal migration curves better represent the natural migration phenomenon as compared to the existing approach of using linear curves. The motivation of this paper is to apply this realistic migration model in BBO, from the domain of natural computing, for natural terrain features classification. The adopted approach calculates the migration rate using Rank- based fitness criteria. The results indicate that highly accurate land-cover features are extracted using the extended BBO technique.

Biogeography-based optimisation (BBO) is a well-used nature-inspired algorithm in dealing with optimisation problems. In our previous work, we have applied this algorithm to multi-objective optimisation problems (MOPs) and termed the algorithm multi-objective biogeography-based optimisation (MOBBO). However, in the design of the original migration operator, a selected emigrant is supposed to be completely replaced by an immigrant, which makes the population diversity be apt to deteriorate. Therefore, the ability to approximate the true Pareto front will be weakened. To address this issue, in this paper, we design a velocity variable for each individual, which depicts the degree how immigrants affect emigrants. The positions of each individual which represents candidate solutions will be affected by their velocities. In this way, emigrants and immigrators' velocities are involved in one migration operator so that the population diversity maintains. We employ several classical benchmarks to compare the improved MOBBO with several other classical algorithms and the results demonstrate that the improved MOBBO with migration velocity is much competitive in addressing MOPs.

With its unique migration operator and mutation operator, Biogeography-Based Optimization (BBO), which simulates migration of species in natural biogeography, is different from existing evolutionary algorithms, but it has shortcomings such as poor convergence precision and slow convergence speed when it is applied to solve complex optimization problems. Therefore, we put forward a Cooperative Coevolutionary Biogeography-Based Optimizer (CBBO) in this paper. In CBBO, the whole population is divided into multiple sub-populations first, and then each subpopulation is evolved with an improved BBO separately. The fitness evaluation of habitats of a subpopulation is conducted by constructing context vectors with selected habitats from other sub-populations. Our CBBO tests are based on 13 benchmark functions and are also compared with several other evolutionary algorithms. Experimental results demonstrate that CBBO is able to achieve better results than other evolutionary algorithms on most of the benchmark functions.

Evolutionary biogeography-based whale optimization methods with communication structure: Towards measuring the balance

As a novel Evolutionary Algorithm (EA), Biogeography-Based Optimization (BBO), inspired by the science of biogeography, draws much attention due to its significant performance in both numerical simulations and practical applications. In BBO, the features in poor solutions have a large probability to be replaced by the features in good solutions. The replacement operator is termed migration. However, the replacement causes a loss of the features in poor solutions, breaks the diversity of population and may lead to a local optimal solution. To overcome this, we design a novel migration operator to propose Backtracking BBO (BBBO). In BBBO, besides the regular population, an external population is employed to record historical individuals. The size of external population is the same as the size of regular population. The external population and regular population are used together to generate the next population. After that, the individuals in external population are randomly selected to be updated by the individuals in current population. In this way, the external population in BBBO can be considered as a memory to take part in the evolutionary process. The memory takes into account both current and historical data to generate next population, which enhances algorithm's ability in exploring searching space. In numerical simulation, 14 classical benchmarks are employed to test BBBO's performance and several classical nature inspired algorithms are use in comparison. The results show that the strategy in BBBO is feasible and very effective to enhance algorithm's performance. In addition, we apply BBBO to mechanical design problems which involve constraints in optimization. The comparison results also exhibit that BBBO is very competitive in solving practical optimization problems.

Meta-heuristics Genetic Algorithms (GA) and Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO) have both shown success when applied to permutation problems such as the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). Therefore, combining the approaches could prove beneficial. This paper presents an ACO inspired mutation operator for use in a GA based on Partial-ACO. Applied to a range of TSP instances the ACO mutation operator demonstrates considerable improvements over standard GA mutation operators finding solutions within a few percent of optimal for TSP instances of nearly 4000 cities. In fact, experiments demonstrate performance close to that of local search with standard mutation operators. Moreover, when integrating local search the ACO inspired mutation operator continues to provide improved results over standard mutation and local search.KeywordsAnt colony optimisationGenetic algorithmMutation

Adaptive neighbourhood for locally and globally tuned biogeography based optimization algorithm