Simple heuristics-based selection of guides for multi-objective PSO with an application to electrical distribution system planning

In multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO), a proper selection of local guides significantly influences detection of non-dominated solutions in the objective/solution space and, hence, the convergence characteristics towards the Pareto-optimal set. This paper presents an algorithm based on simple heuristics for selection of local guides in MOPSO, named as HSG-MOPSO (Heuristics-basedSelection-of-Guides in MOPSO). In the HSG-MOPSO, the set of potential guides (in a PSO iteration) consists of the non-dominated solutions (which are normally stored in an elite archive) and some specifically chosen dominated solutions. Thus, there are two types of local guides in the HSG-MOPSO, i.e., non-dominated and dominated guides; they are named so as to signify whether the chosen guide is a non-dominated or a dominated solution. In any iteration, a guide, from the set of available guides, is suitably selected for each population member. Some specified proportion of the current population members follow their respective nearest non-dominated guides and the rest follow their respective nearest dominated guides. The proposed HSG-MOPSO is firstly evaluated on a number of multiobjective benchmark problems along with investigations on the controlling parameters of the guide selection algorithm. The performance of the proposed method is compared with those of two wellknown guide selection methods for evolutionary multi-objective optimization, namely the Sigma method and the Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm-2 (SPEA2) implemented in PSO framework. Finally, the HSG-MOPSO is evaluated on a more involved real world problem, i.e., multi-objective planning of electrical distribution system. Simulation results are reported and analyzed to illustrate the viability of the proposed guide selection method for MOPSO. & 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.