DNPSO: A Dynamic Niching Particle Swarm Optimizer for multi-modal optimization

In this paper, a new variant of the PSO algorithm called dynamic niching particle swarm optimizer (DNPSO) is proposed. Similar to basic PSO, DNPSO is a global optimization algorithm in which the main population of the particles is divided into some sub-swarms and a group of free particles. A new sub-swarm forming algorithm is proposed. This new form of sub-swarm creation, combined with free particles which implement a cognition-only model of PSO, brings about a great balance between exploration and exploitation characteristics of the standard PSO. DNPSO is tested with some well-known and widely used benchmark functions and the results are compared with several PSO-based multi-modal optimization methods. The results show that in all cases, DNPSO provides the best solutions.