Improved genetic operator for genetic algorithm

Abstract

The mutation operator has been seldom improved because researchers hardly suspect its ability to prevent genetic algorithm (GA) from converging prematurely. Due to its importance to GA, the authors of this paper study its influence on the diversity of genes in the same locus, and point out that traditional mutation, to some extent, can result in premature convergence of genes (PCG) in the same locus. The above drawback of the traditional mutation operator causes the loss of critical alleles. Inspired by digital technique, we introduce two kinds of boolean operation into GA to develop a novel mutation operator and discuss its contribution to preventing the loss of critical alleles. The experimental results of function optimization show that the improved mutation operator can effectively prevent premature convergence, and can provide a wide selection range of control parameters for GA.