Differential evolution with adaptive population size combining lifetime and extinction mechanisms

Differential Evolution (DE) is a simple and efficient numerical optimization method. Most DE variants in the literature adopt fixed population size. This paper incorporates into DE the mechanisms of lifetime and extinction which regulate DE's population size in an adaptive manner. The population size is adjusted according to the online progress of fitness improvement. Two schemes of inserting new individuals are proposed to match different mechanisms respectively. The performance of these innovations is examined through the optimization of benchmark problems. The results show that the proposed adaptive population sizing strategy is efficient for improving the convergence and efficiency of the DE.