Differential evolution using a superior–inferior crossover scheme

<Para ID="Par1">Differential evolution (DE) is a new population-based stochastic optimization, which has difficulties in solving large-scale and multimodal optimization problems. The reason is that the population diversity decreases rapidly, which leads to the failure of the clustered individuals to reproduce better individuals. In order to improve the population diversity of DE, this paper aims to present a superior–inferior (SI) crossover scheme based on DE. Specifically, when population diversity degree is small, the SI crossover is performed to improve the search space of population. Otherwise, the superior–superior crossover is used to enhance its exploitation ability. In order to test the effectiveness of our SI scheme, we combine the SI with adaptive differential evolution (JADE), which is a recently developed DE variant for numerical optimization. In addition, the theoretical analysis of SI scheme is provided to show how the population’s diversity can be improved. In order to make the selection of parameters in our scheme more intelligently, a self-adaptive SI crossover scheme is proposed. Finally, comparative comprehensive experiments are given to illustrate the advantages of our proposed method over various DEs on a suite of 24 numerical optimization problems. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015