Spiral bacterial foraging optimization method: Algorithm, evaluation and convergence analysis

A biologically-inspired algorithm called Spiral Bacterial Foraging Optimization (SBFO) is investigated in this article. SBFO, previously proposed by the same authors, is a multi-agent, gradient-based algorithm that minimizes both the main objective function (local cost) and the distance between each agent and a temporary central point (global cost). A random jump is included normal to the connecting line of each agent to the central point, which produces a vortex around the temporary central point. This random jump is also suitable to cope with premature convergence, which is a feature of swarm-based optimization methods. The most important advantages of this algorithm are as follows: First, this algorithm involves a stochastic type of search with a deterministic convergence. Second, as gradient-based methods are employed, faster convergence is demonstrated over GA, DE, BFO, etc. Third, the algorithm can be implemented in a parallel fashion in order to decentralize large-scale computation. Fourth, the algorithm has a limited number of tunable parameters, and finally SBFO has a strong certainty of convergence which is rare in existing global optimization algorithms. A detailed convergence analysis of SBFO for continuously differentiable objective functions has also been investigated in this article.