A Hybrid Harmony Search Algorithm with Distribution Estimation for Solving the 0-1 Knapsack Problem

Abstract

Many optimization algorithms have been applied to solve high-dimensional instances of the 0-1 knapsack problem. However, these algorithms often fall into a local optimization trap and thus fail to obtain the global optimal solutions. To circumvent this shortcoming, a hybrid harmony search algorithm with distribution estimation is proposed in this paper. A few important features of the proposed algorithm are as follows: (i) the idea of probability distribution estimation is employed to design the adaptive search strategy, (ii) a fixed improvisation process is presented to improve the algorithm searching ability, (iii) a new method of initialization is used to ensure that the initialization is feasible harmony and (iv) an improved remediation approach is proposed to effectively repair the infeasible solutions. To assess the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, some experiments are carried out. The experimental results reveal that the proposed algorithm is a reliable and promising alternative for solving the 0-1 knapsack problem.