Self-adaptive mutation in the differential evolution

Abstract

The Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm is an efficient and powerful evolutionary algorithm (EA) for solving optimization problems. However the success of DE in solving a specific problem is closely related to appropriately choosing its control parameters. Parameter tuning leads to additional computational costs because of time-consuming trial-and-error tests. Self-adaptation, in contrast, allows the algorithm to reconfigure itself, automatically adapting to the problem being solved. There are in the literature some self-adaptive versions of differential evolution, however they do not align completely with self-adaptation concepts. In this paper, some self-adaptive versions of DE in the literature are described and discussed, and then a new Self-Adaptive Differential Evolution with multiple mutation strategies is proposed; it is called Self-adaptive Mutation Differential Evolution (SaMDE) and aims at preserving the essential characteristics of self-adaptation. Some computational experiments which illustrate algorithm behaviour and a comparative test with the classical DE and with an important self-adaptive DE are presented. The results suggest that SaMDE is a very promising algorithm.