Improved particle swarm optimization algorithm using design of experiment and data mining techniques

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a relatively new global optimization algorithm. Benefitting from its simple concept, fast convergence speed and strong ability of optimization, it has gained much attention in recent years. However, PSO suffers from premature convergence problem because of the quick loss of diversity in solution search. In order to improve the optimization capability of PSO, design of experiment method, which spreads the initial particles across a design domain, and data mining technique, which is used to identify the promising optimization regions, are studied in this research to initialize the particle swarm. From the test results, the modified PSO algorithm initialized by OLHD (Optimal Latin Hypercube Design) technique successfully enhances the efficiency of the basic version but has no obvious advantage compared with other modified PSO algorithms. An extension algorithm, namely OLCPSO (Optimal Latin hypercube design and Classification and Regression tree techniques for improving basic PSO), is developed by consciously distributing more particles into potential optimal regions. The proposed method is tested and validated by benchmark functions in contrast with the basic PSO algorithm and five PSO variants. It is found from the test studies that the OLCPSO algorithm successfully enhances the efficiency of the basic PSO and possesses competitive optimization ability and algorithm stability in contrast to the existing initialization PSO methods.