BQIABC: A new Quantum-Inspired Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm for Binary Optimization Problems

Artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is a swarm intelligence optimization algorithm inspired by the intelligent behavior of honey bees when searching for food sources. The various versions of the ABC algorithm have been widely used to solve continuous and discrete optimization problems in different fields. In this paper a new binary version of the ABC algorithm inspired by quantum computing, called binary quantum-inspired artificial bee colony algorithm (BQIABC), is proposed. The BQIABC combines the main structure of ABC with the concepts and principles of quantum computing such as, quantum bit, quantum superposition state and rotation Q-gates strategy to make an algorithm with more exploration ability. The proposed algorithm due to its higher exploration ability can provide a robust tool to solve binary optimization problems. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, several experiments are conducted on the 0/1 knapsack problem, Max-Ones and Royal-Road functions. The results produced by BQIABC are compared with those of ten state-of-the-art binary optimization algorithms. Comparisons show that BQIABC presents the better results than or similar to other algorithms. The proposed algorithm can be regarded as a promising algorithm to solve binary optimization problems

Metaheuristic design of feedforward neural networks: a review of two decades of research

Over the past two decades, the feedforward neural network (FNN) optimization has been a key interest among the researchers and practitioners of multiple disciplines. The FNN optimization is often viewed from the various perspectives: the optimization of weights, network architecture, activation nodes, learning parameters, learning environment, etc. Researchers adopted such different viewpoints mainly to improve the FNN's generalization ability. The gradient-descent algorithm such as backpropagation has been widely applied to optimize the FNNs. Its success is evident from the FNN's application to numerous real-world problems. However, due to the limitations of the gradient-based optimization methods, the metaheuristic algorithms including the evolutionary algorithms, swarm intelligence, etc., are still being widely explored by the researchers aiming to obtain generalized FNN for a given problem. This article attempts to summarize a broad spectrum of FNN optimization methodologies including conventional and metaheuristic approaches. This article also tries to connect various research directions emerged out of the FNN optimization practices, such as evolving neural network (NN), cooperative coevolution NN, complex-valued NN, deep learning, extreme learning machine, quantum NN, etc. Additionally, it provides interesting research challenges for future research to cope-up with the present information processing era