title: Exploratory power of the harmony search algorithm: analysis and improvements for global numerical optimization.
abstract: The theoretical analysis of evolutionary algorithms is believed to be very important for understanding their internal search mechanism and thus to develop more efficient algorithms. This paper presents a simple mathematical analysis of the explorative search behavior of a recently developed metaheuristic algorithm called harmony search (HS). HS is a derivative-free real parameter optimization algorithm, and it draws inspiration from the musical improvisation process of searching for a perfect state of harmony. This paper analyzes the evolution of the population-variance over successive generations in HS and thereby draws some important conclusions regarding the explorative power of HS. A simple but very useful modification to the classical HS has been proposed in light of the mathematical analysis undertaken here. A comparison with the most recently published variants of HS and four other state-of-the-art optimization algorithms over 15 unconstrained and five constrained benchmark functions reflects the efficiency of the modified HS in terms of final accuracy, convergence speed, and robustness.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata 700032, India. swagatamdas19@yahoo.co.in
authors.forename: Swagatam
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Das
authors.forename: Arpan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mukhopadhyay
authors.forename: Anwit
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Roy
authors.forename: Ajith
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Abraham
authors.forename: Bijaya K
authors.initials: BK
authors.lastname: Panigrahi