A Study of Multiobjective Metaheuristics When Solving Parameter Scalable Problems

To evaluate the search capabilities of a multiobjective algorithm, the usual approach is to choose a benchmark of known problems, to perform a fixed number of function evaluations, and to apply a set of quality indicators. However, while real problems could have hundreds or even thousands of decisio...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Durillo, Juan J., Nebro, Antonio J., Coello Coello, Carlos A., García Nieto, José Manuel, Luna, Francisco, Alba, Enrique
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión enviada para evaluación y publicación
Fecha de publicación:2010
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Sevilla (US)
Repositorio:idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla
OAI Identifier:oai:idus.us.es:11441/108409
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/11441/108409
https://doi.org/10.1109/TEVC.2009.2034647
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Comparative study
Efficiency
Metaheuristics
Multi-objective optimization
Scalability
Descripción
Sumario:To evaluate the search capabilities of a multiobjective algorithm, the usual approach is to choose a benchmark of known problems, to perform a fixed number of function evaluations, and to apply a set of quality indicators. However, while real problems could have hundreds or even thousands of decision variables, current benchmarks are normally adopted with relatively few decision variables (normally from 10 to 30). Furthermore, performing a constant number of evaluations does not provide information about the effort required by an algorithm to get a satisfactory set of solutions; this information would also be of interest in real scenarios, where evaluating the functions defining the problem can be computationally expensive. In this paper, we study the effect of parameter scalability in a number of state-of-the-art multiobjective metaheuristics. We adopt a benchmark of parameter-wise scalable problems (the Zitzler–Deb–Thiele test suite) and analyze the behavior of eight multiobjective metaheuristics on these test problems when using a number of decision variables that range from 8 up to 2048. By using the hypervolume indicator as a stopping condition, we also analyze the computational effort required by each algorithm in order to reach the Pareto front. We conclude that the two analyzed algorithms based on particle swarm optimization and differential evolution yield the best overall results.