Micro-MOPSO: A multi-objective particle Swarm Optimizer that uses a very small population size

Abstract

In this chapter, we present a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA) based on the heuristic called "particle swarm optimization" (PSO). This multi-objective particle swarm optimizer (MOPSO) is characterized for using a very small population size, which allows it to require a very low number of objective function evaluations (only 3000 per run) to produce reasonably good approximations of the Pareto front of problems of moderate dimensionality. The proposed approach first selects the leader and then selects the neighborhood for integrating the swarm. The leader selection scheme adopted is based on Pareto dominance and uses a neighbors density estimator. Additionally, the proposed approach performs a reinitialization process for preserving diversity and uses two external archives: one for storing the solutions that the algorithm finds during the search process and another for storing the final solutions obtained. Furthermore, a mutation operator is incorporated to improve the exploratory capabilities of the algorithm. The proposed approach is validated using standard test functions and performance measures reported in the specialized literature. Our results are compared with respect to those generated by the Nondominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II), which is a MOEA representative of the state-of-the-art in the area. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.