Particle swarm optimizers for Pareto optimization with enhanced archiving techniques

During the last decade, numerous heuristic search methods for solving multi-objective optimization problems have been developed. Population oriented approaches such as evolutionary algorithms and particle swarm optimization can be distinguished into the class of archive-based algorithms and algorithms without archive. While the latter may lose the best solutions found so far, archive based algorithms keep track of these solutions. In this article, a new particle swarm optimization technique, called DOPS, for multi-objective optimization problems is proposed. DOPS integrates well-known archiving techniques from evolutionary algorithms into particle swarm optimization. Modifications and extensions of the archiving techniques are empirically analyzed and several test functions are used to illustrate the usability of the proposed approach. A statistical analysis of the obtained results is presented. The article concludes with a discussion of the obtained results as well as ideas for further research.