A hybrid biogeography-based optimization with simplex method and its application

Purpose - This paper proposes a hybrid biogeography-based optimization (BBO) with simplex method (SM) algorithm (HSMBBO). Design/methodology/approach - BBO is a new intelligent optimization algorithm. The global optimization ability of BBO is better than that of genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO), but BBO also easily falls into local minimum. To improve BBO, HSMBBO combines BBO and SM, which makes full use of the high local search ability of SM. In HSMBBO, BBO is used firstly to obtain the current global solution. Then SM is searched to acquire the optimum solution based on that global solution. Due to the searching of SM, the search range is expanded and the speed of convergence is faster. Meanwhile, HSMBBO is applied to motion estimation of video coding. Findings - In total, six benchmark functions with multimodal and high dimension are tested. Simulation results show that HSMBBO outperforms GA, PSO and BBO in converging speed and global search ability. Meanwhile, the application results show that HSMBBO performs better than GA, PSO and BBO in terms of both searching precision and time-consumption. Originality/value - The proposed algorithm improves the BBO algorithm and provides a new approach for motion estimation of video coding.