Self-adaptive differential evolution algorithm using population size reduction and three strategies

Many real-world optimization problems are large-scale in nature. In order to solve these problems, an optimization algorithm is required that is able to apply a global search regardless of the problems' particularities. This paper proposes a self-adaptive differential evolution algorithm, called jDElscop, for solving large-scale optimization problems with continuous variables. The proposed algorithm employs three strategies and a population size reduction mechanism. The performance of the jDElscop algorithm is evaluated on a set of benchmark problems provided for the Special Issue on the Scalability of Evolutionary Algorithms and other Metaheuristics for Large Scale Continuous Optimization Problems. Nonparametric statistical procedures were performed for multiple comparisons between the proposed algorithm and three well-known algorithms from literature. The results show that the jDElscop algorithm can deal with large-scale continuous optimization effectively. It also behaves significantly better than other three algorithms used in the comparison, in most cases.