Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm with Multiple Phases for Solving Continuous Optimization Problems

An algorithm with different parameter settings often performs differently on the same problem. The parameter settings are difficult to determine before the optimization process. The variants of particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithms are studied as exemplars of swarm intelligence algorithms. Based on the concept of building block thesis, a PSO algorithm with multiple phases was proposed to analyze the relation between search strategies and the solved problems. Two variants of the PSO algorithm, which were termed as the PSO with fixed phase (PSOFP) algorithm and PSO with dynamic phase (PSODP) algorithm, were compared with six variants of the standard PSO algorithm in the experimental study. The benchmark functions for single-objective numerical optimization, which includes 12 functions in 50 and 100 dimensions, are used in the experimental study, respectively. The experimental results have verified the generalization ability of the proposed PSO variants