Improved Harmony Search Algorithm: LHS

In this paper, we propose an improved harmony search algorithm named LHS with three key features: (i) adaptive global pitch adjustment is designed to enhance the exploitation ability of solution space; (ii) opposition-based learning technique is blended to increase the diversity of solution; (iii) competition selection mechanism is established to improve solution precision and enhance the ability of escaping local optima. The performance of the LHS algorithm with respect to harmony memory size (HMS) and harmony memory considering rate (HMCR) are also analyzed in detail. To further evaluate the performance of the proposed LHS algorithm, comparison with ten state-of-the-art harmony search variants over a large number of benchmark functions with different characteristics is carried out. The numerical results confirm the superiority of the proposed LHS algorithm in terms of accuracy, convergence speed and robustness. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.