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In this paper a metaheuristic based newfangled adaptive weighted improved discrete particle swarm optimization (AWIDPSO) algorithm is applied to minimize the load balancing index in radial distribution network reconfiguration (RDNR) problem. It is devised as extremely nonlinear and multimodal optimization problem under practical constraints. In order to improve the solution quality the constraint violations are augmented with objective function. Further, adaptively varying inertia weight increases the possible solution in the global search space and the proposed algorithm has obtained the optimal solution within lesser executing time. In this study, 33-bus system is analyzed for optimal network reconfiguration using the developed framework. Comparison of the simulated results with the results of well known prudent optimization technique confirms the applicability of the AWIDPSO algorithm for RDNR problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper, we present an enhanced parallel cat swarm optimization (EPCSO) method for solving numerical optimization problems. The parallel cat swarm optimization (PCSO) method is an optimization algorithm designed to solve numerical optimization problems under the conditions of a small population size and a few iteration numbers. The Taguchi method is widely used in the industry for optimizing the product and the process conditions. By adopting the Taguchi method into the tracing mode process of the PCSO method, we propose the EPCSO method with better accuracy and less computational time. In this paper, five test functions are used to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed EPCSO method. The experimental results show that the proposed EPCSO method gets higher accuracies than the existing PSO-based methods and requires less computational time than the PCSO method. We also apply the proposed method to solve the aircraft schedule recovery problem. The experimental results show that the proposed EPCSO method can provide the optimum recovered aircraft schedule in a very short time. The proposed EPCSO method gets the same recovery schedule having the same total delay time, the same delayed flight numbers and the same number of long delay flights as the . The optimal solutions can be found by the proposed EPCSO method in a very short time. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The job-shop scheduling problem (JSSP) is a branch of production scheduling, and it is well known that this problem is NP-hard. Many different approaches have been applied to JSSP and a rich harvest has been obtained. However, some JSSP, even with moderate size, cannot be solved to guarantee optimality. The standard particle optimization algorithm generally is used to solve continuous optimization problems, and is used rarely to solve discrete problems such as JSSP. This paper presents a similar PSO algorithm to solve JSSP. At the same time, some new valid algorithm operators are proposed in this paper, and through simulation we find out the effectiveness of them. Three representative (Taillard) instances were made by computational experiments, through comparing the SPSO algorithm with standard GA, and we obtained that the SPSOA is more clearly efficacious than standard GA for JSSP to minimize makespan. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper presents a grey particle swarm optimization learning algorithms to self classify different input patterns as correct subgroups. In our learning stratagem, a grey relational analysis (GRA) is combined with Particle swarm optimization (PSO) to develop a classification system. In our research, the GRA is more effective and accurate than the common-used Euclidean norm measure. The evolutional PSO is a very powerful learning algorithm to optimize the classifying task for complex, irregular and high dimensional input patterns. Several artificial data clustering examples compared with k-means method is presented to demonstrate the robustness of the proposed grey particle swarm optimization clustering algorithm. A real image classifying problem is also provided with the grey particle swarm optimization clustering algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) method is relatively a new population-based intelligence algorithm and exhibits good performance in optimization problems. However, during the optimization process, the particles become more and more similar, and gather into the neighborhood of the best particle in the swarm, which makes the swarm prematurely converged possibly around the local solution. PSO technique can be augmented with an additional mutation operator that provides diversity and helps prevent premature convergence on local optima. In this paper, mathematical analysis of a basic PSO is reissued and a diversity concept is evaluated in commonly used PSO algorithms including constriction factor PSO, inertial weight PSO, Gaussian mutation PSO, and a new vibrational mutation PSO combining the idea of mutation strategy related to periodicity. New algorithm is tested and compared with selected PSO algorithms. The comparative experiments have been conducted on a wide range of nonlinear functions and a path planning problem of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in three-dimensional (3D) terrain environment. The results give insight into how mutation operator effects the nature of the diversity and show that the addition of a mutation operator with a periodicity concept can significantly enhance the optimization performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper proposes a new multi-start, stochastic global optimization algorithm that uses dimensional reduction techniques based upon approximations of space-filling curves, simulated annealing and particle swarm optimization, aiming at finding global minima of real-valued functions that are not necessarily well behaved, that is, are not required to be differentiable, continuous, or even satisfying Lipschitz conditions. The overall idea is as follows: given a real-valued function with a multidimensional and compact domain the method builds an equivalent one-dimensional problem by composing with a linearization of searches for a small population of candidates and returns to the original high-dimensional domain, this time with a small set of promising starting points. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Particle swarm optimization is a novel swarm-intelligence-based algorithm and a valid optimization technique. However, the algorithm suffers from the premature convergence problem when facing to complex optimization problem. In order to keep the balance between the global exploration and the local exploitation validly, the paper develops a knowledge-based cooperative particle swarm optimization (KCPSO). KCPSO mainly simulates the self-cognitive and self-learning process of evolutionary agents in special environment, and introduces a knowledge billboard to record varieties of search information. Moreover, KCPSO takes advantage of multi-swarm to maintain the swarm diversity and tries to guide their evolution by the shared information. Under the guide of the shared information, KCPSO manipulates each sub-swarm to go on with local exploitation in different local area, in which every particle follows a social learning behavior mode; at the same time, KCPSO carries out the global exploration through the escaping behavior and the cooperative behavior of the particles in different sub-swarms. KCPSO can maintain appropriate swarm diversity and alleviate the premature convergence validly. The proposed model was applied to some well-known benchmarks. The relative experimental results show KCPSO is a robust global optimization method for the complex multimodal functions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper presents a novel particle swarm optimization algorithm from the angle of ecological population evolution, called the ecological particle swarm optimization, or EPSO. Initially, ecological population competition model (EPCM) is presented. From the basis of the EPCM, the EPSO algorithm and its general framework are proposed; in which particle swarm system with ecological hierarchy and competition model is defined and two collocating strategies of inertia weight factor are considered. The convergence performance and population dynamics including population aggregation and population diversity of the proposed approach are discussed separately through empirical simulations with well-known benchmarks from the standard literature. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

How to manage trade-off between exploitation and exploration in Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) for efficiently solving various optimization problems is an important issue. In order to prevent premature convergence in PSO search, this paper proposes a new method, Particle Swarm Optimization with Diversive Curiosity (PSO/DC). A key idea of the proposed method is to introduce a mechanism of diversive curiosity into PSO for preventing premature convergence and for managing the exploration-exploitation trade-off. Diversive curiosity is represented by an internal indicator that detects marginal improvement of a swarm of particles for certain number of iterations, and forces them to continually explore an optimal solution to a given optimization problem. Applications of the proposed method to a 2-dimensional optimization problem well demonstrate its effectiveness. Our experimental results indicate that the performance (100%) by the proposed method is superior in terms of success ratio to that (60%) by the PSO model optimized by EPSO, and basically accord with the finding called "the zone of curiosity" in psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In many countries the power systems are going to move toward creating a competitive structure for selling and buying electrical energy. These changes and the numerous advantages of the distributed generation units (DGs) in term of their technology enhancement and economical considerations have created more incentives to use these kinds of generators than before. Therefore, it is necessary to study the impact of DGs on the power systems, especially on the distribution networks. The distribution feeder reconfiguration (DFR) is one of the most important control schemes in the distribution networks, which can be affected by DGs. This paper presents a new approach to DFR at the distribution networks considering DGs. The main objective of the DFR is to minimize the deviation of the bus voltage, the number of switching operations and the total cost of the active power generated by DGs and distribution companies. Since the DFR is a nonlinear optimization problem, we apply the particle swarm optimization (PSO) approach to solve it. The feasibility of the proposed approach is demonstrated and compared with other evolutionary methods such as genetic algorithm (GA), Tabu search (TS) and differential evolution (DE) over a realistic distribution test system. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Particle swarm optimization (PSO) as an efficient and powerful problem-solving strategy has been widely used, but appropriate adjustment of its parameters usually requires a lot of time and labor. So a co-evolving framework is proposed to improve the robustness of the PSO. In this paper, within this framework the fuzzy rules for the manipulation of the inertia weights are co-evolved with the particles. And the simulation results on a suite of test functions show that the use of this co-evolving framework improves the performance of the PSO, especially the robustness against the dimensional variation of the test functions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]