Integrating opposition-based learning into the evolution equation of bare-bones particle swarm optimization

Bare-bones particle swarm optimization (BPSO) is attractive since it is parameter free and easy to implement. However, it suffers from premature convergence because of quickly losing diversity, and the dimensionality of the solved problems has great impact on the solution accuracy. To overcome these drawbacks, this paper proposes an opposition-based learning (OBL) modified strategy. First, to decrease the complexity of algorithm, OBL is not used for population initialization. Second, OBL is employed on the personal best positions (i.e., Pbest) to reconstruct Pbest, which is helpful to enhance convergence speed. Finally, we choose the global worst particle (Gworst) from Pbest, which simulates the human behavior and is called rebel learning item, and is integrated into the evolution equation of BPSO to help jump out local optima by changing the flying direction. The proposed modified BPSO is called BPSO-OBL, it has been evaluated on a set of well-known nonlinear benchmark functions in different dimensional search space, and compared with several variants of BPSO, PSOs and other evolutionary algorithms. Experimental results and statistic analysis confirm promising performance of BPSO-OBL on solution accuracy and convergence speed in solving majority nonlinear functions.