Potential offspring production strategies: An improved genetic algorithm for global numerical optimization

In this paper, a sharing evolution genetic algorithms (SEGA) is proposed to solve various global numerical optimization problems. The SEGA employs a proposed population manager to preserve chromosomes which are superior and to eliminate those which are worse. The population manager also incorporates additional potential chromosomes to assist the solution exploration, controlled by the current solution searching status. The SEGA also uses the proposed sharing concepts for cross-over and mutation to prevent populations from falling into the local minimal, and allows GA to easier find or approach the global optimal solution. All the three parts in SEGA, including population manager, sharing cross-over and sharing mutation, can effective increase new born offspring's Solution searching ability. Experiments were conducted on CEC-05 benchmark problems which included unimodal, multi-modal, expanded, and hybrid composition functions. The results showed that the SEGA displayed better performance when solving these benchmark problems compared to recent variants of the genetic algorithms. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.