Title
Learning to Decompose: A Paradigm for Decomposition-Based Multiobjective Optimization
Abstract
The decomposition-based evolutionary multiobjective optimization (EMO) algorithm has become an increasingly popular choice for <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">a posteriori</italic> multiobjective optimization. However, recent studies have shown that their performance strongly depends on the Pareto front (PF) shapes. This can be attributed to the decomposition method, of which the reference points and subproblem formulation settings are not well adaptable to various problem characteristics. In this paper, we develop a learning-to-decompose (LTD) paradigm that adaptively sets the decomposition method by learning the characteristics of the estimated PF. Specifically, it consists of two interdependent parts, i.e., a learning module and an optimization module. Given the current nondominated solutions from the optimization module, the learning module periodically learns an analytical model of the estimated PF. Thereafter, useful information is extracted from the learned model to set the decomposition method for the optimization module: 1) reference points compliant with the PF shape and 2) subproblem formulations whose contours and search directions are appropriate for the current status. Accordingly, the optimization module, which can be any decomposition-based EMO algorithm in principle, decomposes the multiobjective optimization problem into a number of subproblems and optimizes them simultaneously. To validate our proposed LTD paradigm, we integrate it with two decomposition-based EMO algorithms, and compare them with four state-of-the-art algorithms on a series of benchmark problems with various PF shapes.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1109/TEVC.2018.2865931
IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation
Keywords
Field
DocType
Optimization,Shape,Sociology,Statistics,Computer science,Self-organizing feature maps,Analytical models
Kriging,Mathematical optimization,A priori and a posteriori,Evolutionary computation,Decomposition method (constraint satisfaction),Multi-objective optimization,Multiobjective optimization problem,Mathematics
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
23
3
1089-778X
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
15
0.47
34
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Mengyuan Wu1622.71
Ke Li2754.86
Sam Kwong34590315.78
Qingfu Zhang47634255.05
Jun Zhang52491127.27