A novel quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm for solving combinatorial optimization problems

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm, called NQEA, for solving combinatorial optimization problems. NQEA uses a new Q-bit update operator to increase the balance between the exploration and exploitation of the search space. In the operator, first, the Q-bits of each individual in the population are updated based on the personal best measurement of that individual and the best measurement of current generation. Then, a restriction is applied to each Q-bit to prevent the premature convergence of its values. The results of experiments on the 0-1 knapsack and NK-landscapes problems show that NQEA performs better than a classical genetic algorithm, CGA, and two quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithms, QEA and vQEA, in terms of convergence speed and accuracy.