Enhancing particle swarm optimization using generalized opposition-based learning

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) has been shown to yield good performance for solving various optimization problems. However, it tends to suffer from premature convergence when solving complex problems. This paper presents an enhanced PSO algorithm called GOPSO, which employs generalized opposition-based learning (GOBL) and Cauchy mutation to overcome this problem. GOBL can provide a faster convergence, and the Cauchy mutation with a long tail helps trapped particles escape from local optima. The proposed approach uses a similar scheme as opposition-based differential evolution (ODE) with opposition-based population initialization and generation jumping using GOBL. Experiments are conducted on a comprehensive set of benchmark functions, including rotated multimodal problems and shifted large-scale problems. The results show that GOPSO obtains promising performance on a majority of the test problems. 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.