Multi-modal Function Optimization

Tarundeep Singh Dhot

Dept of ECE
Concordia University
Montreal, QC H3G 1M8

Multimodal optimization problems are typically those problems where besides a

global optimum, there exists one or more local optima in the landscape, thus, increasing
the complexity of the problem. The local optima necessarily may not be unwanted as they
correspond to high fitness solutions too. For example in pattern matching a perfect match
may correspond to the global optimum while the partial and imperfect matches
correspond to the local optima. Multimodal problems can be seen as a result of global
population sub-divided into smaller infrequently communicating sub-populations each
adapted to its local conditions. Thus, what we see is a number of highly fit local optima
each representing such solutions. A typical landscape of a multimodal problem contains
what are known as ‘basins of attraction’ around local optima defined as the set of points
from which a local search algorithm would end up at the given local optima. The peaks or
disjoint regions of high fitness in the landscape are known as niches. These niches can be
considered as the biological equivalent of different environmental niches that could be
inhabited, so it is interesting to see how the concept can be harnessed using EAs for
optimization problems.

For such adaptive landscapes, EAs can be considered to operate within three
distinct spaces, namely algorithmic, representation and solution which are conceptually
equivalent to geographical, genotypic and phenotypic spaces in biological evolution.
Both implicit as well as explicit measures can be used to find good solutions for a
multimodal problem. There are various approaches for Implicit Methods including Island
Model EA, Diffusion Model EA, and Auto Speciation in a single population. Island Model
EA considers evolving multiple populations in tandem or parallel using some
communication structure (Parallelism). There is migration or exchange of individuals
after some fixed number of generations. Diffusion Model EAs consider spatial
distributions within one population. To achieve this, local operators are used for parent
and survivor selection in order to conceptually divide the population into a number of
smaller overlapping sub-populations. In contrast to Island and Diffusion Model EAs
where by imposing mating restrictions diversity is preserved (attempted), Automatic
Speciation approach imposes some mating restrictions based on some aspect of candidate
solutions defining them to be belonging to a different species. Recombination is thus
done between individuals from same species from a population which is essentially multi
species. On the other hand, Explicit diversity maintenance schemes work on the idea of
forcing the population to maintain different niches when doing selection or replacement.
The two common forms are fitness sharing where the fitness of individuals adjusted
prior to selection in an attempt to allocate individuals to niches in proportion to niche
fitness, and crowding where a distance-based survivor selection policy is used in an
attempt to distribute individuals uniformly amongst niches.
 As far as algorithmic implementation is concerned, from a comparison between
Sharing GA and a Multi-population GA, it is seen that the MPGA performs far better
than the Sharing GA. Even though to overcome the inherent limitation of Sharing GA
(high time complexity), many techniques like Dynamic Niche Sharing, adaptive
clustering, etc have been implemented on the Sharing GA, it is seen that MPGAs work
better on Multi-modal optimization problems. MPGAs are inspired by the Island Model
of GAs explicitly maintain a set of sub-populations equivalent to niches of Sharing GA,
evolving each of them separately and independently with each of them focused on one of
the optima in the space thus, maintaining the diversity within sub-populations. An
improvement over the MPGA is the Bi-MPGA which enhances the diversity and
proposes two objectives instead of one such that the second objective complements the
first with distinct properties that the original does not possess. Another important issue is
the identification of clusters. It uses Recursive Middling to achieve effective and robust
clustering. It is seen that offers better results than the Sharing GA (DNC) in terms of
comprehensive coverage of optima in multimodal landscapes as well as speed of
operation thus offering a better choice for GAs concerning multimodal function
optimization than Sharing GA.