Population's variance-based Adaptive Differential Evolution for real parameter optimization

Differential evolution (DE) is an evolutionary algorithm (EA) that uses a rather greedy and less stochastic approach to solve optimization problems than other evolutionary methods [1]. Like other EAs, DE is a population-based, stochastic global optimizer, capable of working reliably in nonlinear and multimodal environments. Due to several features such as simplicity, efficiency and global search capabilities, DE rapidly became a successful paradigm of evolutionary computation. However, to achieve adequate performance with DE, the process of tuning the control parameters is essential as its performance is sensitive to the choice of both mutation and crossover settings. This paper proposes a DE algorithm with adaptive tuning of scaling factor (F), crossover rate (CR) and quasi-oppositional probability based on population's variance information - Adaptive Differential Evolution (ADE). Furthermore, ADE adopts a vector called Fm in each dimension of the optimization problem instead of single variable for F as presented in the classical DE approach. The proposed optimization method is validated on the test-bed proposed for the IEEE CEC'13 (IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation 2013) contest for real parameter single objective optimization with 28 benchmark functions. Simulation results over the benchmark functions demonstrate the effectiveness and usefulness of the proposed ADE method. This version of paper includes the ADE's performance on the 10, 30 and 50-dimensional benchmark functions.