A Memetic Algorithm (MA) for the calibration of microscopic traffic flow simulation models is proposed in this study. The proposed MA includes a combination of genetic and simulated annealing algorithms. The genetic algorithm performs the exploration of the search space and identifies a zone where a possible global solution could be located. After this zone has been found, the simulated anneali...

In this paper, we consider Simultaneous Perturbation Stochastic Approximation (SPSA) for function minimization. The standard assumption for convergence is that the function be three times differentiable, although weaker assumptions have been used for special cases. However, all work that we are aware of at least requires differentiability. In this paper, we relax the differentiability requireme...

A stochastic approximation method for optimizing a class of discrete functions is considered. The procedure is a version of the Simultaneous Perturbation Stochastic Approximation (SPSA) method that has been modified to obtain a stochastic optimization method for cost functions defined on a grid of points in Euclidean p-space having integer components. We discuss the algorithm and examine its co...

We consider discrete-time xed gain stochastic approximation processes that are de ned in terms of a random eld that is identically zero at some point . The boundedness of the estimator process is enforced by a resetting mechanism. Under appropriate technical conditions the estimator sequence is shown to converge to with geometric rate almost surely. This result is in striking contrast to classi...

Continuous quality improvement calls for employing methodologies that assist in continual reduction of variations in process performance characteristics around their target values. In a complex operations process the underlying structure of the process is unknown to the operations managers. Hence, identification of the source of variations and variation reduction are difficult and time consumin...

Multilevel inverters (MLI) are popular in high-power applications. MLIs generally configured to have switches reduced by switching techniques that eliminate low-order harmonics. The selective harmonic elimination (SHE) method, which significantly reduces the number of switching, determines optimal moments obtain desired output voltage and eliminates components. To solve SHE problem, classical m...