Adaptive Hierarchical Fair Competition (AHFC) Model For Parallel Evolutionary Algorithms

The HFC model for parallel evolutionary computation is inspired by the stratified competition often seen in society and biology. Subpopulations are stratified by fitness. Individuals move from low-fitness to higher-fitness subpopulations if and only if they exceed the fitness-based admission threshold of the receiving subpopulation, but not of a higher one. The HFC model implements several critical features of a competent parallel evolutionary computation model, simultaneously and naturally, allowing rapid exploitation while impeding premature convergence. The AHFC model is an adaptive version of HFC, extending it by allowing the admission thresholds of fitness levels to be determined dynamically by the evolution process itself. The effectiveness of the Adaptive HFC model is compared with the HFC model on a genetic programming-based evolutionary synthesis example.