A Self-Adaptive Niching Genetic Algorithm for Multimodal Optimization of Electromagnetic Devices

A new niching genetic algorithm (NGA) called self-adaptive NGA (SANGA) is proposed. The main innovation is that the niche radius is estimated as an additional variable of the optimization problem and is not assigned a priori, as is usually done in other standard NGAs. SANGA, coupled with the deterministic pattern search method, forms a hybrid optimization method which works well in the optimization of multimodal functions and in the design of electromagnetic devices.