An iterative cyclic tri-strategy hybrid stochastic fractal with adaptive differential algorithm for global numerical optimization

Abstract

Many real-life problems can be formulated as numerical optimization problems. Such problems pose a challenge for researchers when designing efficient techniques that are capable of finding the desired solution without suffering from premature convergence. This paper proposes a novel evolutionary algorithm that blends the exploitative and explorative merits of two main evolutionary algorithms, namely the Stochastic Fractal Search (SFS) and a Differential Evolution (DE) variant. This amalgam has an effective interaction and cooperation of an ensemble of diverse strategies to derive a single framework called Iterative Cyclic Tri-strategy with adaptive Differential Stochastic Fractal Evolutionary Algorithm (Ic3-aDSF-EA). The component algorithms cooperate and compete to enhance the quality of the generated solutions and complement each other. The iterative cycles in the proposed algorithm consist of three consecutive phases. The main idea behind the cyclic nature of Ic3-aDSF-EA is to gradually emphasize the work of the best-performing algorithm without ignoring the effects of the other inferior algorithm during the search process. The cooperation of component algorithms takes place at the end of each cycle for information sharing and the quality of solutions for the next cycle. The algorithm's performance is evaluated on 43 problems from three different benchmark suites. The paper also investigates the application to a set of real-life problems. The overall results show that the proposed Ic3-aDSF-EA has a propitious performance and a reliable scalability behavior compared to other state-of-the-art algorithms.