A novel hybrid sine cosine algorithm for global optimization and its application to train multilayer perceptrons

The Sine Cosine Algorithm (SCA) is a recently developed efficient metaheuristic algorithm to find the solution of global optimization problems. However, in some circumstances, this algorithm suffers the problem of low exploitation, skipping of true solutions and insufficient balance between exploration and exploitation. Therefore, the present paper aims to alleviate these issues from SCA by proposing an improved variant of SCA called HSCA. The HSCA modifies the search mechanism of classical SCA by including the leading guidance and hybridizing with simulated quenching algorithm. The proposed HSCA is tested on classical benchmark set, standard and complex benchmarks sets IEEE CEC 2014 and CEC 2017 and four engineering optimization problems. In addition to these problems, the HSCA is also used to train multilayer perceptrons as a real-life application. The experimental results and analysis on benchmark problems and real-life application problems demonstrate the superiority of the HSCA as compared to other comparative optimization algorithms.