The Virtual Gene Genetic Algorithm

This paper presents the virtual gene genetic algorithm (vgGA) which is a generalization of traditional genetic algorithms that use binary linear chromosomes. In the vgGA, traditional one point crossover and mutation are implemented as arithmetic functions over the integers or reals that the chromosome represents. This implementation allows the generalization to virtual chromosomes of alphabets of any cardinality. Also, the sites where crossover and mutation fall can be generalized in the vgGA to values that do not necessarily correspond to positions between bits or digits of another base, thus implementing generalized digits. Preliminary results that indicate that the vgGA outperforms a GA with binary linear chromosomes on integer and real valued problems where the underlying structure is not binary are presented.