Using a Genetic Algorithm-based Hyper-heuristic to Tune MOEA/D for a Set of Various Test Problems

Abstract

The multi-objective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition (MOEA/D) is one of the most popular algorithms in the field of evolutionary multi-objective optimization (EMO). Even though MOEA/D has been widely used in many studies, it is likely that the performance of MOEA/D is not always optimized since the same MOEA/D implementation is often used on various problems with different characteristics. However, obtaining an appropriate implementation of MOEA/D for a different problem is not always easy, since there exists a wide variety of choices for the components and parameters in MOEA/D. In this paper, we examine the use of a genetic algorithm-based hyper-heuristic procedure to offline tune MOEA/D on a single test problem, a set of similar test problems, and a set of various test problems. A total of 26 benchmark test problems are used in our study. Experimental results show that the MOEA/D tuned for a set of various test problems does not always perform well. It is also shown that the MOEA/D tuned for a single test problem and for a set of similar test problems always has high performance. Our experimental results strongly suggest the necessity of using a tuning procedure to obtain a different MOEA/D implementation for a different type of problems.