Global artificial bee colony search algorithm for numerical function optimization

The standard artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm as a relatively new swarm optimization method is often trapped in local optima in global optimization. In this paper, a novel search strategy of main three procedures of the ABC algorithm is presented. The solutions of the whole swarm are exploited based on the neighbor information by employed bees and onlookers in the ABC algorithm. According to incorporating all employed bees´ historical best position information of food source into the solution search equation, the improved algorithm that is called global artificial bee colony search algorithm has great advantages of convergence property and solution quality. Some experiments are made on a set of benchmark problems, and the results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is more effective than other population based optimization algorithms.