Velocity pausing particle swarm optimization: a novel variant for global optimization

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is one of the most well-regard metaheuristics with remarkable performance when solving diverse optimization problems. However, PSO faces two main problems that degrade its performance: slow convergence and local optima entrapment. In addition, the performance of this algorithm substantially degrades on high-dimensional problems. In the classical PSO, particles can move in each iteration with either slower or faster speed. This work proposes a novel idea called velocity pausing where particles in the proposed velocity pausing PSO (VPPSO) variant are supported by a third movement option that allows them to move with the same velocity as they did in the previous iteration. As a result, VPPSO has a higher potential to balance exploration and exploitation. To avoid the PSO premature convergence, VPPSO modifies the first term of the PSO velocity equation. In addition, the population of VPPSO is divided into two swarms to maintain diversity. The performance of VPPSO is validated on forty three benchmark functions and four real-world engineering problems. According to the Wilcoxon rank-sum and Friedman tests, VPPSO can significantly outperform seven prominent algorithms on most of the tested functions on both low- and high-dimensional cases. Due to its superior performance in solving complex high-dimensional problems, VPPSO can be applied to solve diverse real-world optimization problems. Moreover, the velocity pausing concept can be easily integrated with new or existing metaheuristic algorithms to enhance their performances.