A novel oppositional biogeography-based optimization for combinatorial problems

In this paper, a novel definition of opposite path is proposed. Its core feature is that the node sequence of candidate paths and the distances between adjacent nodes in the tour are considered simultaneously. In a sense, the path and its corresponding opposite path have the same (or similar, at least) distance from the optimal path in the current population. Based on an accepted framework for employing opposition-based learning, the Oppositional Biogeography-Based Optimization using the Current Optimum, called COOBBO algorithm, is introduced to solve combinatorial problem, such as traveling salesman problems. The performance of COOBBO on 8 benchmark problems is demonstrated and compared with other optimization algorithms. Simulation results illustrate that the excellent performance of our proposed algorithm is attributed to the distinct definition of opposite path.