An improved artificial electric field algorithm and its application in neural network optimization

Artificial electric field (AEF) algorithm is a newly developed meta-heuristic optimization technique inspired by the Coulomb's law of electrostatic force. As so far, AEF algorithm has been successfully applied in some scientific research and engineering fields, but it still has the defects of premature convergence and poor search ability in handling complex optimization problems. To address such issues, a novel Coulomb's constant generation scheme is explored to calculate the electrostatic force, and then an improved AEF (IAEF) algorithm is developed to strengthen the global exploration capability. Subsequently, 18 popular test functions with different dimensions are selected as benchmarks for performance evaluation. Furthermore, two nonlinear problems of neural network optimization are employed to further investigate the effectiveness and superiority of IAEF algorithm. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed IAEF is efficient and effective optimization method in comparison with the conventional AEF and several famous evolutionary algorithms.