Population size reduction for the differential evolution algorithm

This paper studies the efficiency of a recently defined population-based direct global optimization method called Differential Evolution with self-adaptive control parameters. The original version uses fixed population size but a method for gradually reducing population size is proposed in this paper. It improves the efficiency and robustness of the algorithm and can be applied to any variant of a Differential Evolution algorithm. The proposed modification is tested on commonly used benchmark problems for unconstrained optimization and compared with other optimization methods such as Evolutionary Algorithms and Evolution Strategies.