A memetic algorithm for extending wireless sensor network lifetime

Extending the lifetime during which a wireless sensor network (WSN) can cover all targets is a key issue in WSN applications such as surveillance. One effective method is to partition the collection of sensors into several covers, each of which must include all targets, and then to activate these covers one by one. Therefore, more covers enable longer lifetime. The problem of finding the maximum number of covers has been modeled as the SET K-COVER problem, which has been proven to be NP-complete. This study proposes a memetic algorithm to solve this problem. The memetic algorithm utilizes the Darwinian evolutionary scheme and Lamarckian local enhancement to search for optima given the considerations of global exploration and local exploitation. Additionally, the proposed algorithm does not require an upper bound or any assumption about the maximum number of covers. The simulation results on numerous problem instances confirm that the algorithm significantly outperforms several heuristic and evolutionary algorithms in terms of solution quality, which demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in extending WSN lifetime.     

Multi-level learning based memetic algorithm for community detection

Complex network has become an important way to analyze the massive disordered information of complex systems, and its community structure property is indispensable to discover the potential functionality of these systems. The research on uncovering the community structure of networks has attracted great attentions from various fields in recent years. Many community detection approaches have been proposed based on the modularity optimization. Among them, the algorithms which optimize one initial solution to a better one are easy to get into local optima. Moreover, the algorithms which are susceptible to the optimized order are easy to obtain unstable solutions. In addition, the algorithms which simultaneously optimize a population of solutions have high computational complexity, and thus they are difficult to apply to practical problems. To solve the above problems, in this study, we propose a fast memetic algorithm with multi-level learning strategies for community detection by optimizing modularity. The proposed algorithm adopts genetic algorithm to optimize a population of solutions and uses the proposed multi-level learning strategies to accelerate the optimization process. The multi-level learning strategies are devised based on the potential knowledge of the node, community and partition structures of networks, and they work on the network at nodes, communities and network partitions levels, respectively. Extensive experiments on both benchmarks and real-world networks demonstrate that compared with the state-of-the-art community detection algorithms, the proposed algorithm has effective performance on discovering the community structure of networks.     

A memetic algorithm for the travelling salesperson problem with hotel selection

In this paper, a metaheuristic solution procedure for the travelling salesperson problem with hotel selection (TSPHS) is presented. The metaheuristic consists of a memetic algorithm with an embedded tabu search, using a combination of well-known and problem-specific neighbourhoods. This solution procedure clearly outperforms the only other existing metaheuristic in the literature. For smaller instances, whose optimal solution is known, it is able to consistently find the optimal solution. For the other instances, it obtains several new best known solutions.     

A multiobjective genetic algorithm for obtaining the optimal size of a recurrent neural network for grammatical inference

Grammatical inference has been extensively studied in recent years as a result of its wide field of application, and in turn, recurrent neural networks have proved themselves to be a good tool for grammatical inference. The learning algorithms for these neural networks, however, have been far less studied than those for feed-forward neural networks. Classical training methods for recurrent neural networks suffer from being trapped in local minimal and having a high computational time. In addition, selecting the optimal size of a neural network for a particular application is a difficult task. This suggests that the problems of developing methods to determine optimal topologies and new training algorithms should be studied.In this paper, we present a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm which is able to determine the optimal size of recurrent neural networks in any particular application. This is specially analyzed in the case of grammatical inference: in particular, we study how to establish the optimal size of a recurrent neural network in order to learn positive and negative examples in a certain language, and how to determine the corresponding automaton using a self-organizing map once the training has been completed.     

A memetic algorithm for the Minimum Sum Coloring Problem

Given an undirected graph G, the Minimum Sum Coloring Problem (MSCP) is to find a legal assignment of colors (represented by natural numbers) to each vertex of G such that the total sum of the colors assigned to the vertices is minimized. This paper presents a memetic algorithm for MSCP based on a tabu search procedure with two neighborhoods and a multi-parent crossover operator. Experiments on a set of 77 well-known DIMACS and COLOR 2002–2004 benchmark instances show that the proposed algorithm achieves highly competitive results in comparison with five state-of-the-art algorithms. In particular, the proposed algorithm can improve the best known results for 15 instances.     

A memetic algorithm for the capacitated location-routing problem with mixed backhauls

The design of distribution networks is one of the most important problems in supply chain and logistics management. The main elements in designing a distribution network are location and routing decisions. As these elements are interdependent in many distribution networks, the overall system cost can decrease if location and routing decisions are simultaneously tackled. In this paper, we consider a Capacitated Location-Routing Problem with Mixed Backhauls (CLRPMB) which is a general case of the capacitated location-routing problem. CLRPMB is defined as finding locations of the depots and designing vehicle routes in such a way that pickup and delivery demands of each customer must be performed with the same vehicle and the overall cost is minimized. Since CLRPMB is an NP-hard problem, we propose a memetic algorithm to solve the problem. To evaluate the performance of the proposed approach, we conduct an experimental study and compare its results with the lower bounds obtained by the branch-and-cut algorithm on a set of instances derived from the literature. Computational results indicate that the proposed approach is able to find optimal or very good quality solutions in a reasonable computation time.     

A machine-learning based memetic algorithm for the multi-objective permutation flowshop scheduling problem

In recent years, the historical data during the search process of evolutionary algorithms has received increasing attention from many researchers, and some hybrid evolutionary algorithms with machine-learning have been proposed. However, the majority of the literature is centered on continuous problems with a single optimization objective. There are still a lot of problems to be handled for multi-objective combinatorial optimization problems. Therefore, this paper proposes a machine-learning based multi-objective memetic algorithm (ML-MOMA) for the discrete permutation flowshop scheduling problem. There are two main features in the proposed ML-MOMA. First, each solution is assigned with an individual archive to store the non-dominated solutions found by it and based on these individual archives a new population update method is presented. Second, an adaptive multi-objective local search is developed, in which the analysis of historical data accumulated during the search process is used to adaptively determine which non-dominated solutions should be selected for local search and how the local search should be applied. Computational results based on benchmark problems show that the cooperation of the above two features can help to achieve a balance between evolutionary global search and local search. In addition, many of the best known Pareto fronts for these benchmark problems in the literature can be improved by the proposed ML-MOMA.     

A tabu search based memetic algorithm for the max-mean dispersion problem

Given a set V of n elements and a distance matrix ${[d_{\mathit{ij}}]}_{n\times n}$ among elements, the max-mean dispersion problem (MaxMeanDP) consists in selecting a subset M from V such that the mean dispersion (or distance) among the selected elements is maximized. Being a useful model to formulate several relevant applications, MaxMeanDP is known to be NP-hard and thus computationally difficult. In this paper, we present a tabu search based memetic algorithm for MaxMeanDP which relies on solution recombination and local optimization to find high quality solutions. One key contribution is the identification of the fast neighborhood induced by the one-flip operator which takes linear time. Computational experiments on the set of 160 benchmark instances with up to 1000 elements commonly used in the literature show that the proposed algorithm improves or matches the published best known results for all instances in a short computing time, with only one exception, while achieving a high success rate of 100%. In particular, we improve 53 previous best results (new lower bounds) out of the 60 most challenging instances. Results on a set of 40 new large instances with 3000 and 5000 elements are also presented. The key ingredients of the proposed algorithm are investigated to shed light on how they affect the performance of the algorithm.     

A spy search mechanism for memetic algorithm in dynamic environments

Searching within the sample space for optimal solutions is an important part in solving optimization problems. The motivation of this work is that today’s problem environments have increasingly become dynamic with non-stationary optima and in order to improve optima search, memetic algorithm has become a preferred search method because it combines global and local search methods to obtain good solutions. The challenge is that existing search methods perform the search during the iterations without being guided by solid information about the nature of the search environment which affects the quality of a search outcome. In this paper, a spy search mechanism is proposed for memetic algorithm in dynamic environments. The method uses a spy individual to scope out the search environment and collect information for guiding the search. The method combines hyper-mutation, random immigrants, hill climbing local search, crowding and fitness, and steepest mutation with greedy crossover hill climbing to enhance the efficiency of the search. The proposed method is tested on dynamic problems and comparisons with other methods indicate a better performance by the proposed method.     

A memetic algorithm for evolutionary prototype selection: A scaling up approach

Prototype selection problem consists of reducing the size of databases by removing samples that are considered noisy or not influential on nearest neighbour classification tasks. Evolutionary algorithms have been used recently for prototype selection showing good results. However, due to the complexity of this problem when the size of the databases increases, the behaviour of evolutionary algorithms could deteriorate considerably because of a lack of convergence. This additional problem is known as the scaling up problem.

Memetic algorithms are approaches for heuristic searches in optimization problems that combine a population-based algorithm with a local search. In this paper, we propose a model of memetic algorithm that incorporates an ad hoc local search specifically designed for optimizing the properties of prototype selection problem with the aim of tackling the scaling up problem. In order to check its performance, we have carried out an empirical study including a comparison between our proposal and previous evolutionary and non-evolutionary approaches studied in the literature.

The results have been contrasted with the use of non-parametric statistical procedures and show that our approach outperforms previously studied methods, especially when the database scales up.     

A memetic algorithm for the re-entrant permutation flowshop scheduling problem to minimize the makespan

A common assumption in the classical permutation flowshop scheduling model is that each job is processed on each machine at most once. However, this assumption does not hold for a re-entrant flowshop in which a job may be operated by one or more machines many times. Given that the re-entrant permutation flowshop scheduling problem to minimize the makespan is very complex, we adopt the CPLEX solver and develop a memetic algorithm (MA) to tackle the problem. We conduct computational experiments to test the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and compare it with two existing heuristics. The results show that CPLEX can solve mid-size problem instances in a reasonable computing time, and the proposed MA is effective in treating the problem and outperforms the two existing heuristics.     

A meta-cognitive sequential learning algorithm for neuro-fuzzy inference system

In this paper, we present a meta-cognitive sequential learning algorithm for a neuro-fuzzy inference system, referred to as, ‘Meta-Cognitive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System’ (McFIS). McFIS has two components, viz., a cognitive component and a meta-cognitive component. The cognitive component employed is a Takagi–Sugeno–Kang type-0 neuro-fuzzy inference system. A self-regulatory learning mechanism that controls the learning process of the cognitive component, by deciding what-to-learn, when-to-learn and how-to-learn from sequential training data, forms the meta-cognitive component. McFIS realizes the above decision by employing sample deletion, sample reserve and sample learning strategy, respectively. The meta-cognitive component use the instantaneous error of the sample and spherical potential of the rule antecedents to select the best training strategy for the current sample. Also, in sample learning strategy, when a new rule is added the rule consequent is assigned such that the localization property of Gaussian rule is fully exploited. The performance of McFIS is evaluated on four regression and eight classification problems. The performance comparison shows the superior generalization performance of McFIS compared to existing algorithms.     

A bibliographical study of grammatical inference

The field of grammatical inference (also known as grammar induction) is transversal to a number of research areas including machine learning, formal language theory, syntactic and structural pattern recognition, computational linguistics, computational biology and speech recognition. There is no uniform literature on the subject and one can find many papers with original definitions or points of view. This makes research in this subject very hard, mainly for a beginner or someone who does not wish to become a specialist but just to find the most suitable ideas for his own research activity. The goal of this paper is to introduce a certain number of papers related with grammatical inference. Some of these papers are essential and should constitute a common background to research in the area, whereas others are specialized on particular problems or techniques, but can be of great help on specific tasks.     

A note on phase transitions and computational pitfalls of learning from sequences

An ever greater range of applications call for learning from sequences. Grammar induction is one prominent tool for sequence learning, it is therefore important to know its properties and limits. This paper presents a new type of analysis for inductive learning. A few years ago, the discovery of a phase transition phenomenon in inductive logic programming proved that fundamental characteristics of the learning problems may affect the very possibility of learning under very general conditions. We show that, in the case of grammatical inference, while there is no phase transition when considering the whole hypothesis space, there is a much more severe “gap” phenomenon affecting the effective search space of standard grammatical induction algorithms for deterministic finite automata (DFA). Focusing on standard search heuristics, we show that they overcome this difficulty to some extent, but that they are subject to overgeneralization. The paper last suggests some directions to alleviate this problem.

A penalty-based edge assembly memetic algorithm for the vehicle routing problem with time windows

In this paper, we present an effective memetic algorithm for the vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW). The paper builds upon an existing edge assembly crossover (EAX) developed for the capacitated VRP. The adjustments of the EAX operator and the introduction of a novel penalty function to eliminate violations of the time window constraint as well as the capacity constraint from offspring solutions generated by the EAX operator have proven essential to the heuristic's performance. Experimental results on Solomon's and Gehring and Homberger benchmarks demonstrate that our algorithm outperforms previous approaches and is able to improve 184 best-known solutions out of 356 instances.     

A decomposition based memetic algorithm for multi-objective vehicle routing problem with time windows

Multi-objective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition (MOEA/D) provides an excellent algorithmic framework for solving multi-objective optimization problems. It decomposes a target problem into a set of scalar sub-problems and optimizes them simultaneously. Due to its simplicity and outstanding performance, MOEA/D has been widely studied and applied. However, for solving the multi-objective vehicle routing problem with time windows (MO-VRPTW), MOEA/D faces a difficulty that many sub-problems have duplicated best solutions. It is well-known that MO-VRPTW is a challenging problem and has very few Pareto optimal solutions. To address this problem, a novel selection operator is designed in this work to enhance the original MOEA/D for dealing with MO-VRPTW. Moreover, three local search methods are introduced into the enhanced algorithm. Experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm can obtain highly competitive results on Solomon׳s benchmark problems. Especially for instances with long time windows, the proposed algorithm can obtain more diverse set of non-dominated solutions than the other algorithms. The effectiveness of the proposed selection operator is also demonstrated by further analysis.     

An efficient memetic algorithm for solving the job shop scheduling problem

The job shop scheduling problem (JSP) is well known as one of the most complicated combinatorial optimization problems, and it is a NP-hard problem. Memetic algorithm (MA) which combines the global search and local search is a hybrid evolutionary algorithm. In this paper, an efficient MA with a novel local search is proposed to solve the JSP. Within the local search, a systematic change of the neighborhood is carried out to avoid trapping into local optimal. And two neighborhood structures are designed by exchanging and inserting based on the critical path. The objective of minimizing makespan is considered while satisfying a number of hard constraints. The computational results obtained in experiments demonstrate that the efficiency of the proposed MA is significantly superior to the other reported approaches in the literature.     

Learning context-free grammar using improved tabular representation

This paper describes an improved version of TBL algorithm [Y. Sakakibara, Learning context-free grammars using tabular representations, Pattern Recognition 38(2005) 1372–1383; Y. Sakakibara, M. Kondo, GA-based learning of context-free grammars using tabular representations, in: Proceedings of 16th International Conference in Machine Learning (ICML-99), Morgan-Kaufmann, Los Altos, CA, 1999] for inference of context-free grammars in Chomsky Normal Form. The TBL algorithm is a novel approach to overcome the hardness of learning context-free grammars from examples without structural information available. The algorithm represents the grammars by parsing tables and thanks to this tabular representation the problem of grammar learning is reduced to the problem of partitioning the set of nonterminals. Genetic algorithm is used to solve NP-hard partitioning problem. In the improved version modified fitness function and new delete specialized operator is applied. Computer simulations have been performed to determine improved a tabular representation efficiency. The set of experiments has been divided into 2 groups: in the first one learning the unknown context-free grammar proceeds without any extra information about grammatical structure, in the second one learning is supported by a partial knowledge of the structure. In each of the performed experiments the influence of partition block size in an initial population and the size of population at grammar induction has been tested. The new version of TBL algorithm has been experimentally proved to be not so much vulnerable to block size and population size, and is able to find the solutions faster than standard one.     

Natural language grammar induction with a generative constituent-context model

We present a generative probabilistic model for the unsupervised learning of hierarchical natural language syntactic structure. Unlike most previous work, we do not learn a context-free grammar, but rather induce a distributional model of constituents which explicitly relates constituent yields and their linear contexts. Parameter search with EM produces higher quality analyses for human language data than those previously exhibited by unsupervised systems, giving the best published unsupervised parsing results on the ATIS corpus. Experiments on Penn treebank sentences of comparable length show an even higher constituent F₁ of 71% on non-trivial brackets. We compare distributionally induced and actual part-of-speech tags as input data, and examine extensions to the basic model. We discuss errors made by the system, compare the system to previous models, and discuss upper bounds, lower bounds, and stability for this task.     

混合式贝叶斯网络结构增量学习算法研究

提出一种混合式贝叶斯网络结构增量学习算法.首先提出多项式时间的限制性学习技术,为每个变量建立候选父节点集合;然后,依据候选父节点集合,利用搜索技术对当前网络进行增量学习.该算法的复杂度显著低于目前最优的贝叶斯网络增量学习算法.理论与实验均表明,所处理的问题越复杂,该算法在计算复杂度方面的优势越明显.