Backward-chaining evolutionary algorithms

Starting from some simple observations on a popular selection method in Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs)—tournament selection—we highlight a previously-unknown source of inefficiency. This leads us to rethink the order in which operations are performed within EAs, and to suggest an algorithm—the EA with efficient macro-selection—that avoids the inefficiencies associated with tournament selection. This algorithm has the same expected behaviour as the standard EA but yields considerable savings in terms of fitness evaluations. Since fitness evaluation typically dominates the resources needed to solve any non-trivial problem, these savings translate into a reduction in computer time. Noting the connection between the algorithm and rule-based systems, we then further modify the order of operations in the EA, effectively turning the evolutionary search into an inference process operating in backward-chaining mode. The resulting backward-chaining EA creates and evaluates individuals recursively, backward from the last generation to the first, using depth-first search and backtracking. It is even more powerful than the EA with efficient macro-selection in that it shares all its benefits, but it also provably finds fitter solutions sooner, i.e., it is a faster algorithm. These algorithms can be applied to any form of population based search, any representation, fitness function, crossover and mutation, provided they use tournament selection. We analyse their behaviour and benefits both theoretically, using Markov chain theory and space/time complexity analysis, and empirically, by performing a variety of experiments with standard and back-ward chaining versions of genetic algorithms and genetic programming.     

An evolutionary algorithm with guided mutation for the maximum clique problem

Estimation of distribution algorithms sample new solutions (offspring) from a probability model which characterizes the distribution of promising solutions in the search space at each generation. The location information of solutions found so far (i.e., the actual positions of these solutions in the search space) is not directly used for generating offspring in most existing estimation of distribution algorithms. This paper introduces a new operator, called guided mutation. Guided mutation generates offspring through combination of global statistical information and the location information of solutions found so far. An evolutionary algorithm with guided mutation (EA/G) for the maximum clique problem is proposed in this paper. Besides guided mutation, EA/G adopts a strategy for searching different search areas in different search phases. Marchiori's heuristic is applied to each new solution to produce a maximal clique in EA/G. Experimental results show that EA/G outperforms the heuristic genetic algorithm of Marchiori (the best evolutionary algorithm reported so far) and a MIMIC algorithm on DIMACS benchmark graphs.     

Group RFM analysis as a novel framework to discover better customer consumption behavior

The RFM model provides an effective measure for customers’ consumption behavior analysis, where three variables, namely, consumption interval, frequency, and money amount are used to quantify a customer’s loyalty and contribution. Based on the RFM value, customers can be clustered into different groups and the group information is very useful in market decision making. However, most previous works completely left out important characteristics of purchased products, such as their prices and lifetimes, and apply the RFM measure on all of a customer’s purchased products. This renders the calculation of the RFM value unreasonable or insignificant for customer analysis. In this paper, we propose a new framework called GRFM (for group RFM) analysis to alleviate the problem. The new measure method takes into account the characteristics of the purchased items so that the calculated the RFM value for the customers are strongly related to their purchased items and can correctly reflect their actual consumption behavior. Moreover, GRFM employs a constrained clustering method PICC (for Purchased Items-Constrained Clustering) that could base on a cleverly designed purchase pattern table to adjust original purchase records to satisfy various clustering constraints as well as to decrease re-clustering time. The GRFM allows a customer to belong to different clusters, and thus to be associated with different loyalties and contributions with respect to different characteristics of purchased items. Finally, the clustering result of PICC contains extra information about the distribution status inside each cluster that could help the manager to decide when is most proper to launch a specific sales promotion campaign. Our experiments have confirmed the above observations and suggest that GRFM can play an important role in building a personalized purchasing management system and an inventory management system.     

Evolutionary algorithms refining a heuristic: a hybrid method for shared-path protections in WDM networks under SRLG constraints.

An evolutionary algorithm (EA) can be used to tune the control parameters of a construction heuristic to an optimization problem and generate a nearly optimal solution. This approach is in the spirit of indirect encoding EAs. Its performance relies on both the heuristic and the EA. This paper proposes a three-phase parameterized construction heuristic for the shared-path protection problem in wavelength division multiplexing networks with shared-risk link group constraints and applies an EA for optimizing the control parameters of the proposed heuristics. The experimental results show that the proposed approach is effective on all the tested network instances. It was also demonstrated that an EA with guided mutation performs better than a conventional genetic algorithm for tuning the control parameters, which indicates that a combination of global statistical information extracted from the previous search and location information of the best solutions found so far could improve the performance of an algorithm.     

Developing a navigation aid for the frail and visually impaired

This paper describes the development of a new navigational aid for the frail, elderly, and visually impaired person. The users were involved both in the user requirements study and in the evaluation of different prototypes. The results show that the users were able to provide information on their current aid, the use situation, and their preference regarding different solutions, but they had difficulties to provide the detailed answers on technical solutions required by the technical development team. Further, prototype evaluations with users enabled the technical team to understand the users and their use situation.     

A statistics-based approach to binary image registration with uncertainty analysis

A new technique is described for the registration of edge-detected images. While an extensive literature exists on the problem of image registration, few of the current approaches include a well-defined measure of the statistical confidence associated with the solution. Such a measure is essential for many autonomous applications, where registration solutions that are dubious (involving poorly focused images or terrain that is obscured by clouds) must be distinguished from those that are reliable (based on clear images of highly structured scenes). The technique developed herein utilizes straightforward edge pixel matching to determine the "best" among a class of candidate translations. A well-established statistical procedure, the McNemar test, is then applied to identify which other candidate solutions are not significantly worse than the best solution. This allows for the construction of confidence regions in the space of the registration parameters. The approach is validated through a simulation study and examples are provided of its application in numerous challenging scenarios. While the algorithm is limited to solving for two-dimensional translations, its use in validating solutions to higher-order (rigid body, affine) transformation problems is demonstrated     

EvAg: a scalable peer-to-peer evolutionary algorithm

This paper studies the scalability of an Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) whose population is structured by means of a gossiping protocol and where the evolutionary operators act exclusively within the local neighborhoods. This makes the algorithm inherently suited for parallel execution in a peer-to-peer fashion which, in turn, offers great advantages when dealing with computationally expensive problems because distributed execution implies massive scalability. In this paper we show another advantage of this algorithm: We experimentally demonstrate that it scales up better than traditional alternatives even when executed in a sequential fashion. In particular, we analyze the behavior of several EAs on well-known deceptive trap functions with varying sizes and levels of deceptiveness. The results show that the new EA requires smaller optimal population sizes and fewer fitness evaluations to reach solutions. The relative advantage of the new EA is more outstanding as problem hardness and size increase. In some cases the new algorithm reduces the computational efforts of the traditional EAs by several orders of magnitude.     

A fast evaluation strategy for evolutionary algorithms

Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are a popular and robust strategy for optimization problems. However, these algorithms may require huge computation power for solving real problems. This paper introduces a “fast evolutionary algorithm” (FEA) that does not evaluate all new individuals, thus operating faster. A fitness and associated reliability value are assigned to each new individual that is only evaluated using the true fitness function if the reliability value is below a threshold. Moreover, applying random evaluation and error compensation strategies to the FEA further enhances the performance of the algorithm. Simulation results show that for six optimization functions an average reduction of 40% in the number of evaluations was observed while obtaining similar solutions to those found using a traditional evolutionary algorithm. For these same functions, by completion, the algorithm also finds a 4% better fitness value on average for the same number of evaluations. For an image compression system, the algorithm found on average 3% (12%) better fitness values or compression ratios using only 58% (65%) number of evaluations needed by an EA in lossless (lossy) compression mode.     

Evolutionary design of hash function pairs for network filters

Network filtering is a challenging area in high-speed computer networks, mostly because lots of filtering rules are required and there is only a limited time available for matching these rules. Therefore, network filters accelerated by field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are becoming common where the fast lookup of filtering rules is achieved by the use of hash tables. It is desirable to be able to fill-up these tables efficiently, i.e. to achieve a high table-load factor in order to reduce the offline time of the network filter due to rehashing and/or table replacement. A parallel reconfigurable hash function tuned by an evolutionary algorithm (EA) is proposed in this paper for Internet Protocol (IP) address filtering in FPGAs. The EA fine-tunes the reconfigurable hash function for a given set of IP addresses. The experiments demonstrate that the proposed hash function provides high-speed lookup and achieves a higher table-load factor in comparison with conventional solutions.     

High-speed maneuvering target detection approach based on joint RFT and keystone transform

Increasing the integration time is an effective method to improve small maneuvering target detection performance in radar applications.However,range migration and Doppler spread caused by maneuvering target motion during the integration time make it difficult to improve the coherent accumulation of target’s energy and detection performance.In this study,a new method based on Radon Fourier transform(RFT) and keystone transform(KT) for high-speed maneuvering target detection is proposed.The proposed algorithm utilizes second-order KT to correct the range curvature,and the improved dechirping method to compensate for the Doppler spread.RFT is then used to correct the range walk for target coherent detection.The method is capable of correcting the range migration and the time-varied Doppler frequency of the target without knowing its velocity and acceleration.The advantage of the proposed method is that it can increase the coherent integration time and improve detection performance under the condition of Doppler frequency ambiguity.Compared with the second-order RFT algorithm,the computational burden of the proposed method is greatly reduced under the premise that the two methods have similar estimation accuracy of range,velocity and acceleration.Numerical experiments demonstrate the validity of the proposed algorithm.     

面向信息化战争整体需求的探索性分析方法

探索性分析方法是适应信息化战争需求发展起来的整体性分析方法。这种方法是一种“自顶向下”的过程,建立在对战争系统各方面要素进行采集、处理和归纳的基础上,通过对战争系统中存在着的大量不确定要素进行整体性的分析,得出综合性更强、更加符合信息化战争特点的分析结果。该文介绍了探索性分析的基本概念、方法和过程,研究了实现探索性分析的主要困难和相应的关键技术,并讨论了有关的问题。     

An Evolutionary Algorithm to Find Associations in Dense Genetic Maps

Discovering the genetic basis of common human diseases will be assisted by large-scale association studies with a large number of individuals and genetic markers, such as single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The potential size of the data and the resulting model space require the development of efficient methodology to unravel associations between epidemiological outcomes and SNPs in dense genetic maps. We apply an evolutionary algorithm (EA) to construct models consisting of logic trees. These trees are Boolean expressions involving nodes that contain strings of SNPs in high linkage disequilibrium (LD), that is, SNPs that are highly correlated with each other. At each generation of the algorithm, a population of logic tree models is modified using selection, crossover, and mutation moves. Logic trees are selected for the next generation using a fitness function based on the marginal likelihood in a Bayesian regression framework. Mutation and crossover moves use LD measures to propose changes to the trees, and facilitate the movement through the model space. We demonstrate our method on data from a candidate gene study of quantitative genetic variation.     

Qualitative design support for engineering and architecture

Conventional design support software tools cannot effectively manage the complex, heterogeneous information used in engineering and architecture (EA) tasks. Crucially, despite uncertainty being an inherent quality of EA information particularly in the early stages of a design project, current tools solely rely on numerical approaches which do not support such incomplete and vague information. In this paper, we establish a complete framework for developing qualitative support tools that directly address these shortcomings. Our framework is application oriented and addresses the broader issues surrounding the actual use of qualitative methods. It provides design principles and strategies that allow a software engineer to develop custom qualitative software tools according to their specific EA task specifications. Our framework also provides the engineer with practical theory and guidelines for implementing their custom qualitative model and validating their system using context specific test data. We demonstrate the validity of our framework by presenting a case study in architectural lighting in which a prototype qualitative reasoning engine successfully automates qualitative logic about the subjective impressions of a lighting installation.     

Do multiple-objective metaheuristics deliver on their promises? A computational experiment on the set-covering problem

In this paper, we compare the computational efficiency of three state-of-the-art multiobjective metaheuristics (MOMHs) and their single-objective counterparts on the multiple-objective set-covering problem (MOSCP). We use a methodology that allows consistent evaluation of the quality of approximately Pareto-optimal solutions generated by of both MOMHs and single-objective metaheuristics (SOMHs). Specifically, we use the average value of the scalarization functions over a representative sample of weight vectors. Then, we compare computational efforts needed to generate solutions of approximately the same quality by the two kinds of methods. In the computational experiment, we use two SOHMs - the evolutionary algorithm (EA) and memetic algorithm (MA), and three MOMH-controlled elitist nondominated sorting genetic algorithm, the strength Pareto EA, and the Pareto MA. The methods are compared on instances of the MOSCP with 2, 3, and 4 objectives, 20, 40, 80 and 200 rows, and 200, 400, 800 and 1000 columns. The results of the experiment indicate good computational efficiency of the multiple-objective metaheuristics in comparison to their single-objective counterparts.     

基于车流信息的车载自组织网络路由协议*

车载自组织网络(VANET)具有高移动性和间歇连通性,而且拓扑变化频繁,特别是在事故或交通堵塞的时候,因此,采用了携带并转发的方式,即移动车辆携带数据直到遇见有可转发的车辆。与现有携带并转发的解决方法不同,本文采用分布式实时估计各路段延时的方法。基于对各路段延时的估计,车辆就能计算车低延时的路由路径,然后提出了分布式实时数据流统计辅助的路由协议(DRTAR)来转发数据。实验结果显示,提出的DRTAR协议性能优于其他算法。     

Surrogate modeling based on an adaptive network and granular computing

Reducing the number of evaluations of expensive fitness functions is one of the main concerns in evolutionary algorithms, especially when working with instances of contemporary engineering problems. As an alternative to this efficiency constraint, surrogate-based methods are grounded in the construction of approximate models that estimate the solutions’ fitness by modeling the relationships between solution variables and their performance. This paper proposes a methodology based on granular computing for the construction of surrogate models for evolutionary algorithms. Under the proposed method, granules are associated with representative solutions of the problem under analysis. New solutions are evaluated with the expensive (original) fitness function only if they are not already covered by an existing granule. The parameters defining granules are periodically adapted as the search goes on using a neuro-fuzzy network that does not only reduce the number of fitness function evaluations, but also provides better convergence capabilities. The proposed method is evaluated on classical benchmark functions and on a recent benchmark created to test large-scale optimization models. Our results show that the proposed method considerably reduces the actual number of fitness function evaluations without significantly degrading the quality of solutions.     

互联网域间路由可扩展性

互联网域间路由可扩展性问题是下一代互联网体系结构设计必须首先解决的关键问题之一.通过引入路由信息熵的概念,深入阐述Internet路由可扩展性问题的内在本质,并基于这一理论模型,分别从3个方面归纳解决路由可扩展性问题的3种可行思路.重点讨论了这3种思路应用于互联网路由系统的出发点和局限性.并就典型的具体提案从体系结构的角度进行了分析评价.最后总结路由可扩展性问题的挑战性,并展望了未来可扩展路由的研究发展方向.     

A Self-guided Genetic Algorithm for permutation flowshop scheduling problems

In this paper we develop a Self-guided Genetic Algorithm (Self-guided GA), which belongs to the category of Estimation of Distribution Algorithms (EDAs). Most EDAs explicitly use the probabilistic model to sample new solutions without using traditional genetic operators. EDAs make good use of the global statistical information collected from previous searches but they do not efficiently use the location information about individual solutions. It is recently realized that global statistical information and location information should complement each other during the evolution process. In view of this, we design the Self-guided GA based on a novel strategy to combine these two kinds of information. The Self-guided GA does not sample new solutions from the probabilistic model. Instead, it estimates the quality of a candidate offspring based on the probabilistic model used in its crossover and mutation operations. In such a way, the mutation and crossover operations are able to generate fitter solutions, thus improving the performance of the algorithm. We tested the proposed algorithm by applying it to deal with the NP-complete flowshop scheduling problem to minimize the makespan. The experimental results show that the Self-guided GA is very promising. We also demonstrate that the Self-guided GA can be easily extended to treat other intractable combinatorial problems.     

Linkage problem, distribution estimation, and Bayesian networks

This paper proposes an algorithm that uses an estimation of the joint distribution of promising solutions in order to generate new candidate solutions. The algorithm is settled into the context of genetic and evolutionary computation and the algorithms based on the estimation of distributions. The proposed algorithm is called the Bayesian Optimization Algorithm (BOA). To estimate the distribution of promising solutions, the techniques for modeling multivariate data by Bayesian networks are used. The BOA identifies, reproduces, and mixes building blocks up to a specified order. It is independent of the ordering of the variables in strings representing the solutions. Moreover, prior information about the problem can be incorporated into the algorithm, but it is not essential. First experiments were done with additively decomposable problems with both nonoverlapping as well as overlapping building blocks. The proposed algorithm is able to solve all but one of the tested problems in linear or close to linear time with respect to the problem size. Except for the maximal order of interactions to be covered, the algorithm does not use any prior knowledge about the problem. The BOA represents a step toward alleviating the problem of identifying and mixing building blocks correctly to obtain good solutions for problems with very limited domain information.     

Using an evolutionary algorithm to optimize the broadcasting methods in mobile ad hoc networks

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a collection of mobile nodes communicating through wireless connections without any prior network infrastructure. In such a network the broadcasting methods are widely used for sending safety messages and routing information. To transmit a broadcast message effectively in a wide and high mobility MANET (for instance in vehicular ad hoc network) is a hard task to achieve. An efficient communication algorithm must take into account several aspects like the neighborhood density, the size and shape of the network, the use of the channel. Probabilistic strategies are often used because they do not involve additional latency. Some solutions have been proposed to make their parameters vary dynamically. For instance, the retransmission probability increases when the number of neighbors decreases. But, the authors do not optimize parameters for various environments. This article aims at determining the best communication strategies for each node according to its neighborhood density. It describes a tool combining a network simulator (ns-2) and an evolutionary algorithm (EA). Five types of context are considered. For each of them, we tackle the best behavior for each node to determine the right input parameters. The proposed EA is first compared to three EAs found in the literature: two well-known EAs (NSGA-II and SPEA2) and a more recent one (DECMOSA-SQP). Then, it is applied to the MANET broadcasting problem.