Survey of Lévy Flight-Based Metaheuristics for Optimization

Lévy flight is a random walk mechanism which can make large jumps at local locations with a high probability. The probability density distribution of Lévy flight was characterized by sharp peaks, asymmetry, and trailing. Its movement pattern alternated between frequent short-distance jumps and occasional long-distance jumps, which can jump out of local optimal and expand the population search area. The metaheuristic algorithms are inspired by nature and applied to solve NP-hard problems. Lévy flight is used as an operator in the cuckoo algorithm, monarch butterfly optimization, and moth search algorithms. The superiority for the Lévy flight-based metaheuristic algorithms has been demonstrated in many benchmark problems and various application areas. A comprehensive survey of the Lévy flight-based metaheuristic algorithms is conducted in this paper. The research includes the following sections: statistical analysis about Lévy flight, metaheuristic algorithms with a Lévy flight operator, and classification of Lévy flight used in metaheuristic algorithms. The future insights and development direction in the area of Lévy flight are also discussed.