An Improved Differential Evolution Algorithm Based on Dual-Strategy

In recent years, Differential Evolution (DE) has shown excellent performance in solving optimization problems over continuous space and has been widely used in many fields of science and engineering. How to avoid the local optimal solution and how to improve the convergence performance of DE are hotpot problems for many researchers. In this paper, an improved differential evolution algorithm based on dual-strategy (DSIDE) is proposed. The DSIDE algorithm has two strategies. (1) An enhanced mutation strategy based on “DE/rand/1,” which takes into account the influence of reference individuals on mutation and has strong global exploration and convergence ability. (2) A novel adaptive strategy for scaling factor and crossover probability based on fitness value has a positive impact on population diversity. The DSIDE algorithm is verified with other seven state-of-the-art DE variants under 30 benchmark functions. Furthermore, Wilcoxon sign rank-sum test, Friedman test, and Kruskal–Wallis test are utilized to analyze the results. The experiment results show that the proposed DSIDE algorithm can significantly improve the global optimization performance.