NFDDE: A novelty-hybrid-fitness driving differential evolution algorithm

Abstract

In differential evolution algorithm (DE), it is a widely accepted method that selecting individuals with higher fitness to generate a mutant vector. In this case, the population evolution is under a fitness-based driving force. Although the driving force is beneficial for the exploitation, it sacrifices performance on the exploration. In this paper, a novelty-hybrid-fitness driving force is introduced to trade off contradictions between the exploration and the exploitation of DE. In the new proposed DE, named as NFDDE, both fitness and novelty values of individuals are considered when choosing individuals to create mutant vectors. In addition, two adaptive scaling factors are proposed to adjust the weights of the fitness-based driving force and the novelty-based driving force, respectively, and then distinct properties of the two driving forces can be effectively utilized. At last, to save computational resources, some individuals with lower novelty are deleted when the population has converged to a certain extent. The comprehensive performance of NFDDE is extensively evaluated by comparisons between it and other 9 state-of-art DE variants based on CEC2017 test suite. In addition, distinct properties of the newly introduced strategies and involved parameters are further confirmed by a set of experiments.