Multi-objective Black Widow Algorithm Guided by Competitive Mechanism and Pheromone Mechanism

Abstract

Black widow optimization algorithm (BWOA) is a swarm intelligence optimization algorithm, which has the advantages of fast convergence and high precision. However, the update strategy adopted by BWOA is too simple, and it is easy to fall into the local optimal solution. Moreover, the search ability in multi-dimensional space is lacking, the population structure is single, and the convergence and diversity of the algorithm need to be improved.  In order to improve the comprehensive performance of BWOA and make it applicable to multi-objective optimization problems, this paper proposes a multi-objective black widow optimization algorithm (MBWOA) guided by a competition mechanism and an improved pheromone mechanism. MBWOA adopts the method of dynamic allocation of populations, which divides the populations into two in the iterative process and uses different competition mechanisms to enhance the diversity of the populations in the iterative process and improve the convergence of the algorithm. At the same time, it uses the improved pheromone mechanism to guide offspring individuals that have gone through the competition mechanism to optimize in the direction of population gap, improve the distribution of population, and enhance the convergence ability of the algorithm. Using MBWOA and four comparison algorithms to conduct comparative experiments on three indicators of IGD, HV and Spread respectively, the results show that MBWOA has better convergence accuracy, convergence speed and diversity. Finally, the effectiveness of the used mechanism is confirmed by the experiments of MBWOA and the comparison algorithms on three indicators.

Keywords

• multi-objective optimization; black widow optimization algorithm (bwoa); competition mechanism; improved pheromone mechanism