Selectively-informed particle swarm optimization

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a nature-inspired algorithm that has shown outstanding performance in solving many realistic problems. In the original PSO and most of its variants all particles are treated equally, overlooking the impact of structural heterogeneity on individual behavior. Here we employ complex networks to represent the population structure of swarms and propose a selectively-informed PSO (SIPSO), in which the particles choose different learning strategies based on their connections: a densely-connected hub particle gets full information from all of its neighbors while a non-hub particle with few connections can only follow a single yet best-performed neighbor. Extensive numerical experiments on widely-used benchmark functions show that our SIPSO algorithm remarkably outperforms the PSO and its existing variants in success rate, solution quality, and convergence speed. We also explore the evolution process from a microscopic point of view, leading to the discovery of different roles that the particles play in optimization. The hub particles guide the optimization process towards correct directions while the non-hub particles maintain the necessary population diversity, resulting in the optimum overall performance of SIPSO. These findings deepen our understanding of swarm intelligence and may shed light on the underlying mechanism of information exchange in natural swarm and flocking behaviors.