Optimal design of fractional-order digital integrators: An evolutionary approach

This paper presents an optimal approach to design Fractional-Order Digital Integrators (FODIs) using a metaheuristic technique, called Hybrid Flower Pollination Algorithm (HFPA). HFPA is a hybrid approach which combines the exploitation and exploration capabilities of two different evolutionary optimization algorithms, namely, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Flower Pollination Algorithm (FPA). The proposed HFPA based designs are compared with the designs based on Real Coded Genetic Algorithm (RGA), PSO, Differential Evolution (DE), and FPA. Simulation results demonstrate that HFPA based FODIs of all the different orders consistently achieve the best magnitude responses. The proposed technique yields FODIs which surpass all the designs based on both classical and evolutionary optimization approaches reported in recent literature.