An adaptive regeneration framework based on search space adjustment for differential evolution

Differential evolution (DE) is a well-known evolutionary algorithm with simple operation and excellent performance, which has been applied to solve various optimization problems. To alleviate the problem of premature convergence or population stagnation faced by DE algorithm, this paper proposes an adaptive regeneration framework based on search space adjustment (ARSA), which can be easily embedded into various DE variants. When one individual cannot get improved for several generations, the ARSA framework will be triggered to randomly generate a substitute individual from a dynamic search space which is determined by a given adjustment mechanism controlled by two different levels of parameters. The trigger condition for each individual is adaptively controlled by its status in the current population. The space adjustment mechanism contains two strategies, one focuses on global exploration while the other on local exploitation. Moreover, the ARSA framework does not add any parameters that need to be pre-set, and all the included parameters are adaptive. To verify the availability of ARSA framework for solving complex optimization problems, thirty functions with different dimensions from IEEE CEC 2017 test platform and three real-life problems are employed for comparative experiments. The experimental results indicate that our ARSA framework notably improves the performance of two basic DE algorithms and six state-of-the-art DE variants.