Global convergence analysis of non-crossover genetic algorithm and its application to optimization

Selection, crossover, and mutation are three main operators of the canonical genetic algorithm (CGA). This paper presents a new approach to the genetic algorithm. This new approach applies only to mutation and selection operators. The paper proves that the search process of the non-crossover genetic algorithm (NCGA) is an ergodic homogeneous Markov chain. The proof of its convergence to global optimum is presented. Some nonlinear multi-modal optimization problems are applied to test the efficacy of the NCGA. NP-hard traveling salesman problem (TSP) is cited here as the benchmark problem to test the efficiency of the algorithm. The simulation result shows that NCGA achieves much faster convergence speed than CGA in terms of CPU time. The convergence speed per epoch of NCGA is also faster than that of CGA.