Chaotic sequences to improve the performance of evolutionary algorithms

Abstract

This paper proposes an experimental analysis on the convergence of evolutionary algorithms (EAs). The effect of introducing chaotic sequences instead of random ones during all the phases of the evolution process is investigated. The approach is based on the substitution of the random number generator (RNG) with chaotic sequences. Several numerical examples are reported in order to compare the performance of the EA using random and chaotic generators as regards to both the results and the convergence speed. The results obtained show that some chaotic sequences are always able to increase the value of some measured algorithm-performance indexes with respect to random sequences. Moreover, it is shown that EAs can be extremely sensitive to different RNGs. Some t-tests were performed to confirm the improvements introduced by the proposed strategy.