Abstract
A new local search technique is proposed and used to improve the performance of particle swarm optimization algorithms by addressing the problem of premature convergence. In the proposed local search technique, a potential particle position in the solution search space is collectively constructed by a number of randomly selected particles in the swarm. The number of times the selection is made varies with the dimension of the optimization problem and each selected particle donates the value in the location of its randomly selected dimension from its personal best. After constructing the potential particle position, some local search is done around its neighbourhood in comparison with the current swarm global best position. It is then used to replace the global best particle position if it is found to be better; otherwise no replacement is made. Using some well-studied benchmark problems with low and high dimensions, numerical simulations were used to validate the performance of the improved algorithms. Comparisons were made with four different PSO variants, two of the variants implement different local search technique while the other two do not. Results show that the improved algorithms could obtain better quality solution while demonstrating better convergence velocity and precision, stability, robustness, and global-local search ability than the competing variants.