A novel ecological particle swarm optimization algorithm and its population dynamics analysis

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. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.