Predication based immune network for multimodal function optimization

For the problem of indeterminate direction of local search, lacking of efficient regulation mechanism between local search and global search and regenerating new antibodies randomly in the original optimization version of artificial immune network (opt-aiNet), this paper puts forward a novel predication based immune network (PiNet) to solve multimodal function optimization more efficiently, accurately and reliably. The algorithm mimics natural phenomenon in immune system such as clonal selection, affinity maturation, immune network, immune memory and immune predication. The proposed algorithm includes two main features with opt-aiNet. The information of antibodies in continuous generations is utilized to point out the direction of local search and to adjust the balance between local and global search. PiNet also employs memory cells to generate new antibodies with high affinities. Theory analysis and experiments on 10 widely used benchmark problems show that when compared with opt-aiNet method, PiNet algorithm is capable of improving search performance significantly in successful rate, convergence speed, search ability, solution quality and algorithm stability. & 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.