Enhanced Performance of Particle Swarm Optimization with Generalized Generation Gap Model with Parent-Centric Recombination Operator

Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm has recently gained more attention in the global optimization research due to its simplicity and global search ability. This paper proposes a hybrid of PSO and Generalized Generation Gap model with Parent- Centric Recombination operator (G3PCX) [25], a well-known real-coded genetic algorithm. The proposed hybrid algorithm, namely PSPG, combines fast convergence and rotational invariance of G3PCX as well as global search ability of PSO. The performance of PSPG algorithm is evaluated using 8 widely-used nonlinear benchmark functions of 30 and 200 decision variables having different properties. The experiments study the effects of its new probability parameter Px and swarm size for optimizing those functions. The results are analyzed and compared with those from the Standard PSO [14] and G3PCX algorithms. The proposed PSPG with Px = 0.10 and 0.15 can outperform both algorithms with a statistical significance for most functions. In addition, the PSPG is not much sensitive to its swarm size as most PSO algorithms are. The best swarm sizes are 40 and 50 for unimodal and multimodal functions, respectively, of 30 decision variables.