Quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithms with a new termination criterion, Hε gate, and two-phase scheme

From recent research on combinatorial optimization of the knapsack problem, quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm (QEA) was proved to be better than conventional genetic algorithms. To improve the performance of the QEA, this paper proposes research issues on QEA such as a termination criterion, a Q-gate, and a two-phase scheme, for a class of numerical and combinatorial optimization problems. A new termination criterion is proposed which gives a clearer meaning on the convergence of Q-bit individuals. A novel variation operator H_ε gate, which is a modified version of the rotation gate, is proposed along with a two-phase QEA scheme based on the analysis of the effect of changing the initial conditions of Q-bits of the Q-bit individual in the first phase. To demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the updated QEA, several experiments are carried out on a class of numerical and combinatorial optimization problems. The results show that the updated QEA makes QEA more powerful than the previous QEA in terms of convergence speed, fitness, and robustness.