An artificial bee colony-least square algorithm for solving harmonic estimation problems

Solving harmonic estimation problems in power quality signals has attained significant importance in recent times. Stochastic optimization algorithms have been successfully employed to determine magnitude of this information in an unknown signal contaminated with noise or containing additive dc decaying components. The present paper shows how a recently proposed stochastic optimization algorithm, called artificial bee colony algorithm, can be hybridized with least square algorithm to solve these problems effectively. The proposed algorithm has been tested for a series of case studies employing different benchmark environment situations and our extensive simulation tests validate the usefulness of the proposed algorithm and it could largely outperform several competing simulation algorithms, proposed in the recent past. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is further demonstrated for those situations where the number of harmonics present in the signal is also not known, along with the magnitude and phase of each harmonic. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.