Hybrid Multiobjective Differential Evolution Incorporating Preference Based Local Search

Abstract

The performance of Differential Evolution (DE) for multiobjective optimization problems (MOPs) can be greatly enhanced by hybridizing with other techniques. In this paper, a new hybrid DE incorporating preference based local search is proposed. In every generation, a set of nondominated solutions is generated by DE operation. Usually these solutions distribute unevenly along the obtained nondominated set. To get solutions in the sparse region of the nondominated set, a mini population and preference based local search algorithm is specifically designed, and is used to exploit the sparse region by optimizing an achievement scalarizing function (ASF) with the dynamically adjusted reference point. As a result, multiple solutions in the sparse region can be obtained. Moreover, to retain uniformly spread nondominated solutions, an improved ε-dominance strategy, which would not delete the extreme points found during the evolution, is proposed to update the external archive set. Finally, numerical results and comparisons demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.