scholarly journals A Hybrid Model of Evolutionary Algorithms and Branch-and-Bound for Combinatorial Optimization Problems

Author(s):  
J.E. Gallardo ◽  
C. Cotta ◽  
A.J. Fernandez
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Chu-Min Li ◽  
Zhenxing Xu ◽  
Jordi Coll ◽  
Felip Manyà ◽  
Djamal Habet ◽  
...  

The Maximum Satisfiability Problem, or MaxSAT, offers a suitable problem solving formalism for combinatorial optimization problems. Nevertheless, MaxSAT solvers implementing the Branch-and-Bound (BnB) scheme have not succeeded in solving challenging real-world optimization problems. It is widely believed that BnB MaxSAT solvers are only superior on random and some specific crafted instances. At the same time, SAT-based MaxSAT solvers perform particularly well on real-world instances. To overcome this shortcoming of BnB MaxSAT solvers, this paper proposes a new BnB MaxSAT solver called MaxCDCL. The main feature of MaxCDCL is the combination of clause learning of soft conflicts and an efficient bounding procedure. Moreover, the paper reports on an experimental investigation showing that MaxCDCL is competitive when compared with the best performing solvers of the 2020 MaxSAT Evaluation. MaxCDCL performs very well on real-world instances, and solves a number of instances that other solvers cannot solve. Furthermore, MaxCDCL, when combined with the best performing MaxSAT solvers, solves the highest number of instances of a collection from all the MaxSAT evaluations held so far.


2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dong-Il Seo ◽  
Byung-Ro Moon

In optimization problems, the contribution of a variable to fitness often depends on the states of other variables. This phenomenon is referred to as epistasis or linkage. In this paper, we show that a new theory of epistasis can be established on the basis of Shannon's information theory. From this, we derive a new epistasis measure called entropic epistasis and some theoretical results. We also provide experimental results verifying the measure and showing how it can be used for designing efficient evolutionary algorithms.


Author(s):  
Chu Min Li ◽  
Felip Manyà

MaxSAT solving is becoming a competitive generic approach for solving combinatorial optimization problems, partly due to the development of new solving techniques that have been recently incorporated into modern MaxSAT solvers, and to the challenge problems posed at the MaxSAT Evaluations. In this chapter we present the most relevant results on both approximate and exact MaxSAT solving, and survey in more detail the techniques that have proven to be useful in branch and bound MaxSAT and Weighted MaxSAT solvers. Among such techniques, we pay special attention to the definition of good quality lower bounds, powerful inference rules, clever variable selection heuristics and suitable data structures. Moreover, we discuss the advantages of dealing with hard and soft constraints in the Partial MaxSAT formalims, and present a summary of the MaxSAT Evaluations that have been organized so far as affiliated events of the International Conference on Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing.


2015 ◽  
Vol 738-739 ◽  
pp. 323-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheng Xiang ◽  
Yi Gang He

To improve the performance of quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithms (QIEAs), a new kind of QIEAs——elite group guided QIEA (EQIEA) are proposed through introducing an elite group guidance updating approach to solve knapsack problems. In EQIEA, the elite group at each iteration is composed of a certain number of individuals with better fitness values in the current population; all the individuals in the elite group cooperate together to affect quantum-inspired gates to produce off spring. Knapsack problems, a class of well-known NP-complete combinatorial optimization problems, are used to conduct experiments. The choices of parameters in EQIEA are discussed in an empirical way. Extensive experiments show that the EQIEA outperform six variants of QIEAs recently reported in the literature in terms of the quality of solutions. This paper also analyzes the convergence of EQIEA and the six variants of QIEAs. Experimental results show that EQIEA has better convergence than the six variants of QIEAs.


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