Quadruple parameter adaptation growth optimizer with integrated distribution, confrontation, and balance features for optimization

Growth optimizer is a novel metaheuristic algorithm that has powerful numerical optimization capabilities. However, its parameters and search operators become crucial factors that significantly impact its optimization capability for engineering problems and benchmarks. Therefore, this paper proposes a quadruple parameter adaptation growth optimizer (QAGO) integrated with distribution, confrontation, and balance features. In QAGO, the quadruple parameter adaptation mechanism aims to reduce the algorithmic sensitivity for parameter setting and enhance the algorithmic adaptability. By employing parameter sampling that adheres to specific probability distributions, the parameter adaptation mechanism achieves dynamic tuning of the algorithm hyperparameters. Moreover, one-dimensional mapping and fitness difference methods are designed in the triple parameter self-adaptation mechanism based on the contradictory relationship to adjust the operator's parameters. After that, "spear" and "shield" are balanced based on the Jensen–Shannon divergence in information theory. Furthermore, the topological structure of the operators is redesigned, and by combining the parameter adaptation mechanism, operator refinement is achieved. Refined operators can effectively utilize different evolutionary information to improve the quality of the solution. The experiment evaluates the performance of QAGO on distinct optimization problems on the CEC 2017 and CEC 2022 test suites. To demonstrate the capability of QAGO in solving real-world applications, it was applied to tackle two specific problems: multilevel threshold image segmentation and wireless sensor network node deployment. The results demonstrated that QAGO delivers highly promising optimization results compared to seventy-one high-performance competing algorithms, including the five IEEE CEC competition winners. The source code of the QAGO algorithm is publicly available at https://github.com/tsingke/QAGO.