Title
The Impact of a Sparse Migration Topology on the Runtime of Island Models in Dynamic Optimization.
Abstract
Island models denote a distributed system of evolutionary algorithms which operate independently, but occasionally share their solutions with each other along the so-called migration topology. We investigate the impact of the migration topology by introducing a simplified island model with behavior similar to islands optimizing the so-called fitness function (Kötzing and Molter in Proceedings of parallel problem solving from nature (PPSN XII), Springer, Berlin, pp 113–122, ). Previous work has shown that when a complete migration topology is used, migration must not occur too frequently, nor too soon before the optimum changes, to track the optimum of the function. We show that using a sparse migration topology alleviates these restrictions. More specifically, we prove that there exist choices of model parameters for which using a unidirectional ring of logarithmic diameter as the migration topology allows the model to track the oscillating optimum through -like phases with high probability, while using any graph of diameter less than for some sufficiently small constant  results in the island model losing track of the optimum with overwhelming probability. Experimentally, we show that very frequent migration on a ring topology is not an effective diversity mechanism, while a lower migration rate allows the ring topology to track the optimum for a wider range of oscillation patterns. When migration occurs only rarely, we prove that dense migration topologies of small diameter may be advantageous. Combined, our results show that the sparse migration topology is able to track the optimum through a wider range of oscillation patterns, and cope with a wider range of migration frequencies.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00453-017-0377-2
Algorithmica
Keywords
Field
DocType
Evolutionary algorithms,Island models,Dynamic problems,Populations,Runtime analysis
Topology,Graph,Oscillation,Evolutionary algorithm,Computer science,Algorithm,Fitness function,Network topology,Logarithm,Ring network,Lambda
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
80
5
0178-4617
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
14
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Andrei Lissovoi1677.69
Carsten Witt239424.26