A Flexible Hardware Architecture for Particle Swarm Optimization

Abstract

This paper presents a novel hardware architecture of particle swarm optimization (PSO) for various kinds of applications based on field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology. The conventional PSO hardware architecture cannot meet the requirements if the PSO algorithm and its numerical system need to change for different applications. The proposed flexible hardware architecture offers a resourceful approach to change the PSO algorithm and its numerical system without hardware modification. The proposed flexible hardware architecture employs two distinctive features. One is the combination of equations of various PSO algorithms and their integration into a new block called a generic particle calculation block (GPCB). The other feature is the use of two different fixed-point formats to meet the requirements of different numerical systems. Our experimental results prove that the proposed hardware architecture can support 10 different types of PSO algorithm with minimal chip cost. Moreover, it can drastically reduce the redevelopment time of PSO hardware implementation by dynamically changing the type of PSO algorithm without redesigning the hardware architecture.