Hierarchical distributed genetic algorithms

Abstract

Genetic algorithm behavior is determined by the exploration/exploitation balance kept throughout the run. When this balance is disproportionate, the premature convergence problem will probably appear, causing a drop in the genetic algorithm's efficacy. One approach presented for dealing with this problem is the distributed genetic algorithm model. Its basic idea is to keep, in parallel, several subpopulations that are processed by genetic algorithms, with each one being independent from the others. Furthermore, a migration operator produces a chromosome exchange between the subpopulations. Making distinctions between the subpopulations of a distributed genetic algorithm by applying genetic algorithms with different configurations, we obtain the so-called heterogeneous distributed genetic algorithms. In this paper, we present a hierarchical model of distributed genetic algorithms in which a higher level distributed genetic algorithm joins different simple distributed genetic algorithms. Furthermore, with the union of the hierarchical structure presented and the idea of the heterogeneous distributed genetic algorithms, we propose a type of heterogeneous hierarchical distributed genetic algorithms, the hierarchical gradual distributed genetic algorithms. Experimental results show that the proposals consistently outperform equivalent sequential genetic algorithms and simple distributed genetic algorithms. ©1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.