Applied Soft Computing 60 (2017) 115–134

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Applied Soft Computing

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/asoc

An efficient modified grey wolf optimizer with Lévy flight for

optimization tasks
Ali Asghar Heidari, Parham Pahlavani ∗
School of Surveying and Geospatial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The grey wolf optimizer (GWO) is a new efficient population-based optimizer. The GWO algorithm can
Received 31 August 2016 reveal an efficient performance compared to other well-established optimizers. However, because of
Received in revised form 14 May 2017 the insufficient diversity of wolves in some cases, a problem of concern is that the GWO can still be
Accepted 20 June 2017
prone to stagnation at local optima. In this article, an improved modified GWO algorithm is proposed
Available online 1 July 2017
for solving either global or real-world optimization problems. In order to boost the efficacy of GWO,
Lévy flight (LF) and greedy selection strategies are integrated with the modified hunting phases. LF is
Keywords:
a class of scale-free walks with randomly-oriented steps according to the Lévy distribution. In order to
Optimization
Lévy flight
investigate the effectiveness of the modified Lévy-embedded GWO (LGWO), it was compared with several
Grey wolf optimizer state-of-the-art optimizers on 29 unconstrained test beds. Furthermore, 30 artificial and 14 real-world
Metaheuristic problems from CEC2014 and CEC2011 were employed to evaluate the LGWO algorithm. Also, statistical
tests were employed to investigate the significance of the results. Experimental results and statistical
tests demonstrate that the performance of LGWO is significantly better than GWO and other analyzed
optimizers.
© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Immature convergence and stagnation at local optima (LO) are

Over the past recent years, various metaheuristic algorithms
(MA) have been established based on diverse natural-based phe-
nomena and philosophies [1]. These stochastic optimizers have
independently applied in the different field of sciences, which may
be due to their metamorphoses in the source of inspiration, explo-
ration and exploitation mechanisms, convergence characteristics,
and the optimality of the results [2–7]. Some of the successful,
popular MA are differential evolution (DE) [8], particle swarm
optimization (PSO) [9], gravitational search algorithm (GSA) [10],
bat algorithm (BA) [11], firefly algorithm (FA) [12], and cuckoo
search (CS) [13]. The PSO and DE are well-known optimizers that
their efficacy and convergence behaviors have been widely inves-
tigated in the literature [14]. The BA [11] mimics the echolocation
activities of bats. The CS [15] is a nature-inspired technique that
simulates brood parasitism of specific cuckoo classes. The GSA [16]
is a physics-based population-based strategy inspired by gravi-
tational forces amongst interactive masses. The FA [17] inspires
the behaviour of small lighting germs detected in summer nights.
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: as heidari@ut.ac.ir (A.A. Heidari), pahlavani@ut.ac.ir,
pahlavani.parham@gmail.com (P. Pahlavani).
some common deficiency in the majority of meta-heuristic algo-
rithms [6,7]. Hence, researchers are often concerned to alleviate
them through modifying previous optimizers or proposing new
ones [18–22]. One of the latest MA is grey wolf Optimizer (GWO)
[23].
Social life of wolves usually depends on their leadership hier-
archy and hunting activities. By inspiration from this fact, the
population-based GWO was developed in 2014 [23]. The GWO is
a new efficient optimizer compared to other methods such as GSA,
FA, BA, and PSO. In GWO, each group has a hierarchical arrangement
and every member of those groups should perform some roles. In
order to perform hunting task, each wolf is led by specific leader(s),
which is a high-ranked member. The ranking of wolves is based on
their mental talents such as awareness and supervision, not their
physical potentials. Hence, three wolves that have a better percep-
tion of the probable location of the victim and are labeled as alpha,
beta, and delta, will guide other members throughout hunting mis-
sions. The steps of hunting phase can be categorized as surrounding
and attacking the quarry. Then, other wolves should modify their
current locations regarding the situation of their leaders in all these
phases.
The GWO algorithm is capable of exposing an efficient per-
formance compared to the other well-designed MA such as GSA,

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.asoc.2017.06.044
1568-4946/© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
116 A.A. Heidari, P. Pahlavani / Applied Soft Computing 60 (2017) 115–134
evolution strategy (ES), DE, and PSO in dealing with various prob-
lems [23]. The last three years have witnessed a rapid growth in the
use of GWO for different applications. Saremi et al. studied the use
of evolutionary population dynamics (EPD) in the basic GWO [2].
The EPD operator has been developed based on the theory of self-
organizing criticality (SOC) [24,25]. In [26], the conventional GWO
has been used for a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) training task. In
2015, the GWO with a pattern search (PS) (GWO-PS) was utilized to
handle the reliable planning of the security smart grid power sys-
tems by considering critical circumstances [27]. In [28], the impact
of Singer and Sinusoidal chaotic signals on the performance of GWO
for solving feature selection tasks has been studied.
In 2014, Mirjalili et al. [29] have compared the performance of
GWO strategy with that of a novel multi-verse optimizer (MVO).
Results revealed that the GWO is capable of outperforming not only
in exploring the proper regions but also in exploitive tendency dur-
ing the search. In 2015, Komaki and Kayvanfar [30] investigated
the efficiency of GWO for solving the flow shop scheduling tasks
which also considered release times. Emary et al. [31] proposed
two new binary GWO for feature selection task in a wrapper mode.
The results reveal that the binary version outperforms PSO and GA
techniques. In 2016, GWO was employed for the mixed heat and
power dispatch task in power systems [32]. The simulations con-
firmed that the quality and consistency of the GWO solutions were
preferable to other evaluated optimizers.
In 2016, Medjahed et al. [33] proposed a GWO-based proce-
dure for hyperspectral band selection task. In 2016, multi-objective
GWO (MOGWO) was also proposed by Mirjalili et al. [34]. In [35],
the efficiency of DE and GWO algorithms are investigated and
compared for tackling optimal power flow (OPF) tasks. In 2016,
a GWO-based approach was employed to design the wide-area
power system stabilizer (WAPSS) [36]. In 2015, Song et al. [37] used
GWO to estimate parameters in surface waves. Simulations of both
synthetic and field datasets revealed that it can reach high levels
of exploration and exploitation and precise stable convergence to
high-quality solutions.
In [38], the GWO was combined with a PM2.5 prediction model
and the accuracy of the results was improved. In [39], the original
GWO has been hybridized with mutation and crossover mecha-
nisms to tackle the economic dispatch problems. In [40], the simple
GWO has been employed to explain the load frequency control
(LFC) in power systems. In [41], the simple GWO has been uti-
lized to be evaluated in the path planning tasks. The basic GWO
has been employed to determine the optimum operative condi-
tions in [42] and to design proportional, derivative and integrative
PID controller in [43].
The GWO can be identified by some significant advantages in
comparison with prior population-based optimizers: minimalism,
flexibility, and sufficient LO escaping potential. Moreover, its imple-
mentation is very easy; and it uses fewer preliminary parameters,
as well as it can demonstrate acceptable convergence trends in
most of the challenging test cases. The GWO is willingly applicable
to dissimilar optimization tasks since, in this method, the target
problems can be considered as black boxes.
However, regarding the insufficient diversity of the wolves in
some cases, the agents of GWO still may face the risk of stagnation
in LO. This problem may often happen when the conventional GWO
cannot perform a smooth transition from exploration to exploita-
tion potential by more iteration. Similar to PSO, DE and the other
optimizers, another probable concern in GWO may be an imma-
ture convergence to some sub-optimum points, which cannot be
accepted as the best possible solutions on the global scale. This
can be detected when the searching mechanisms of GWO still can-
not relief it from LO to better ones. Although most of the previous
works just utilized the basic version of GWO in tackling different
engineering problems [18–25], it is perceived that some modifica-
tion to basic searching pattern still can improve its performance
and alleviate its convergence errors. One possible way to this task
is to reconstruct hunting mechanism of wolves using the Lévy flight
(LF)-based patterns.
The LF can be described as a family of scale-free walks
by randomly-oriented steps according to Lévy distribution [44].
After various investigations about foraging patterns of wildlife, it
was discovered and published in nature journal that the behav-
iors of several animals can be interpreted based on LF concept
[45,46]. They declared that throughout evolution, organism search
approaches could be developed in a way that they may discover the
best Lévy-triggered patterns. In addition, the motion patterns of
several types of animals can estimate optimal Lévy explorations in
theory. Strong support has been discovered for Lévy-based search
and hunting behaviors among marine predators such as sharks and
billfish.
Later, the LF concept was also introduced to nature-inspired
optimizers to ensure enhancement of them and make them more
realistic. Yang and Deb [47,48] employed LF distribution to gener-
ate new search agents in cuckoo search (CS) algorithm. Also, LF was
used to improve the basic PSO [49,50], FA [51], and ABC [52]. These
studies affirm that LF can considerably enhance the performance
of stochastic optimizers.
In GWO, the search agents are attracted toward the probable
optimal points by following the first best solutions (leaders) in each
generation. But, after this exploitative motions, search agents of
GWO are inclined to the problem of stagnation in LO. The stagnation
problems in GWO have motivated us to propose a new modified
GWO hybridized with LF concept for realizing either global or real-
world task. Hence, to alleviate the stagnation problems in GWO, it is
modified here and then hybridized with LF concept. The main idea
behind LGWO is to enhance the exploration of GWO by embedding
LF-based patterns into the hunting steps of GWO. The LF can sup-
port GWO for regaining the right balance between exploration and
exploitation tendencies of wolves throughout the hunting process.
The proposed LGWO is evaluated and compared with different algo-
rithms for treating several optimization test cases from CEC2005,
CEC2011, and CEC2014. The results verify that significant improve-
ments can be discovered in the results of LGWO compared to the
other competitors.
This paper is structured as follows: at first, the core characteris-
tics of the conventional GWO are studied in Section 2. Subsequently,
the structure of the modified GWO with LF is provided in Section 3.
The proposed GWO-based approach is substantiated using a wide
set of test beds and details are discussed in Section 4. Finally, the
main concluding remarks are reported in Section 5.
2. An overview of GWO algorithm
The GWO can be regarded as a robust swarm-based optimizer
[30,32–34,37,38]. This algorithm is inspired by the social hierarchy
and hunting strategies of grey wolves in wildlife. In GWO, the ini-
tial population should be divided into certain categories including
alpha (␣), beta (ˇ), delta (ı), and omega (ω). The best wolves should
be treated as ␣, ˇ, and ı that assist other wolves (ω) in exploring
more favorable regions of solution space (see Fig. 1).
In conventional GWO, the motion of wolves is described as [23]:
→ → → →
D = | C . X p (t) − X (t)|, (1)
→ → → →
X (t + 1) = X p (t) − A . D , (2)
 A.A. Heidari, P. Pahlavani / Applied Soft Computing 60 (2017) 115–134 117

Fig. 1. Social hierarchy of wolves and their characteristics in GWO.

Fig. 2. Possible 2D and 3D locations of wolves nearby the prey.

→ → →
driven mechanisms. In this regard, the states of wolves are adjusted
where t is iteration, A and C are random vectors, Xp is location of the
→ → → by Eqs. (5)–(7) [23]:
prey, and X is the position of wolves. The random A and C vectors
→ → → →
are calculated as [23]: D˛ = | C 1 . X ˛ − X |, (5)
→ → → →
→ Dˇ = |C 2.X ˇ − X |, (6)
→ → →
A = 2a. r 1 − a, (3) → → → →
Dı = | C 3 . X ı − X |, (7)
→ → → → →
C = 2r2 , (4) where X˛ , Xˇ , Xı denote the locations of alpha, beta, and delta
→ → → →
  respectively; C1 , C2 , C3 represent random vectors, and X specifies
where a  = a0 1 − t/T is a temporal parameter that its elements the location of the present solution. Eqs. (5)–(7) rule the estimated
are linearly decreased from a0 to 0, r1 and r2 are random values span amongst the recent solution and the ␣, ˇ, and ı types, respec-
inside [0,1]. In basic GWO, a0 was set to 2. In order to clearly realize tively. After estimating of distances, the final state of the updated
the effects of these simple rules, position vector of wolves and a solutions is determined by [23]:
selection of their neighbors are demonstrated in Fig. 2. These illus- → → → →
trations show that the search agents can reach different situations X1 = X ˛ − A 1 .( D ˛ ), (8)
around the prey by modifying the values of A and C parameters. In → → → →
addition, random values r1 and r2 can assist each search agent in X2 = Xˇ − A 2 .( D ˇ ), (9)
touching any location among the depicted points in Fig. 2. → → → →
These animals are capable of identifying the position of the X3 = Xı − A 3 .( D ı ), (10)
quarry and to enclose them. The hunting procedure is typically → → → →
directed by the alpha types. In some conditions, the beta and delta X (t + 1) = 0.33 × ( X 1 + X2 + X 3 ), (11)
might contribute in hunting as well. In GWO, it has been supposed → → →
where A1 , A2 , A3 show random vectors and t shows recent iteration.
that the alpha (best solution), beta and delta can guesstimate the
The step size of the ω wolves is expressed in Eqs. (5)–(7), respec-
possible situation of the victim. Hence, the first three best solutions
tively. The final location of the ω wolves is formulated in Eq. (8) to
should be recorded to lead other hunters [30].
Eq. (11). An illustration of the aforementioned mechanisms can be
It is apparent that the end position is situated in a random place
perceived in Fig. 3.
inside a hypersphere in the search space. Therefore, elite solutions → →
will approximate the optimum and other hunt agents have to revise The A and C are two random and adaptive vectors that assist
→
their locations around an estimated victim based on stochastically- GWO in explorative and exploitative behaviors. The vector A is a
118 A.A. Heidari, P. Pahlavani / Applied Soft Computing 60 (2017) 115–134

Fig. 3. Movement mechanism of GWO in 3D.

random value inside [-2a, 2a], where the elements of a are lin- in LGWO is updated based on ␣ and ˇ types using the following
→
early decreased from 2 to 0. The exploration happens when A equation:
→ →
is larger than 1 or less than −1 (| A | > 1). The C parameter can → → → → → → →
→ X (t) = 0.5 × ( X ˛ − A 1 D ˛ + X ˇ − A 2 D ˇ ). (12)
encourage exploration tendency while it is larger than 1 (| C | > 1).
→ In LGWO, these movements will be performed toward the best
In addition, the exploitation trend can be improved when | A | < 1
→ minima over the search space. In these motions, random walks
and | C | < 1. Note that A is narrowed linearly over simulation to give may be appropriate to model the animal motions more realisti-
more weight to exploitation by more time [30,47,53]. However, cally [49,52]. Lévy motion is regarded as a variety of non-Gaussian
→
C is determined randomly to give stress to both exploration and random procedures whose random steps should be determined
exploitation tendencies at each stage, which is a simple mechanism based on Lévy stable distribution [44]. Lévy distribution can be
for alleviating the LO entrapment problem [23,30,35]. The structure represented by a clear power-law equation as [49]:
of GWO is described in Fig. 4.
L(s)∼|s|−1−ˇ , 0 < ˇ ≤ 2, (13)

where s is the variable and ˇ is Lévy index for controlling of stability

3. The modified GWO with LF distribution [49]. The Lévy distribution can be formulated as [49]:

  
The conventional GWO algorithm updates its hunters towards  1 0<<s<∞
L(s, , ) = 2 exp − , (14)
the victim based on the condition of the alpha, beta, and delta 2(s − ) (s − )
3/2 s≤0
0
(leader wolves). However, the population of GWO is still inclined
to stagnation in LO in some cases. Hence, GWO’s problems of where  shows a shift parameter and  > 0 is a scale parameter
immature convergence can still be experienced. In some cases, the [47,52]. Lévy distribution can also be reformulated based on Fourier
standard GWO algorithm is not capable of performing a seamless transform as follows [52]:
transition from the exploration to exploitation phases.  
ˇ
To relive the above-mentioned concerns, LF can be used. The LF F(k) = exp −˛|k| , 0 < ˇ ≤ 2, (15)
can assist GWO in searching based on deeper searching patterns.
Using this concept, it can be ensured that GWO can handle global Where ␣ is a parameter inside [−1, 1], which is referred as the
searching more efficiently. By this manner, the stagnation prob- skewness and scale factor. Referring to the investigations of Deb
lem can also be relieved. In addition, the quality of the candidate and Lee in [54,55], different values of ˇ can significantly affect the
solutions should be enhanced in Lévy-embedded GWO through- shape of LF distribution. When the values of ˇ are small, longer
out the simulation. For this purpose, three main modifications are jumps are generated; otherwise, the LF can create smaller jumps
proposed: first, the role of delta wolves in the social hierarchy will using greater values of ˇ [49].
be played by other wolves; second, the LF concept is embedded It has been verified that Lévy-based movements can be regarded
into modified GWO, and third, the greedy selection (GS) strategy is as optimal searching (hunting) approaches for foragers/hunters
employed for LF-based modified GWO. in non-destructive foraging circumstances [46]. Several theoreti-
In LGWO, delta wolves are not considered as a specific class in cal works have demonstrated Lévy-based patterns in hunting of
different phases of hunting processes. In the basic method, updat- wildlife such as monkeys and sharks [45,46,52,56–58]. For instance,
ing and initialization of these types of wolves affect its overall marine predators show Lévy-based motion patterns throughout
searching performance. It should be noted that the dominance hier- hunting procedure [46]. Based on [59], Exploration (searching) will
archy of wolves can help GWO to memorize better solutions for be optimal for exploring randomly scattered objects, while it is per-
guiding the remained members of the population. In LGWO, social formed according to Lévy walk on the LF-based path with a constant
hierarchy can still be effective using three types of wolves including velocity. In this regard, it may be advantageous to revise the hunt-
alpha (˛), beta (ˇ), and omega (ω). Hence, the position of wolves ing process of wolves in GWO according to the LF concept. The LF
 A.A. Heidari, P. Pahlavani / Applied Soft Computing 60 (2017) 115–134 119

Fig. 4. (A) Flowchart of the GWO technique. (B) Effects of LF on the searching history of wolves.

may assist LGWO in mimicking wolves’ hunting patterns more real-
istically and precisely than the original GWO. Therefore, it comes to
the thought that using LF as an alternative can be an effective idea
for mitigating the stagnation problems of GWO. Hence, as another
modification to GWO, new positions are determined by:
 → → → → → →
0.5 × ( X ˛ − A 1 D˛ + X ˇ − A 2 Dˇ ) + ˛ ⊕ Levi(ˇ) |A| > 0.5
→
X new (t) =
→ → → → → →
0.5 × ( X ˛ − A 1 D˛ + X ˇ − A 2 Dˇ )
where ␣ shows the step size that is associated with the scales of
the target problem, ˇ is the Lévy index inside [0, 2] and ⊕ sym-
bolizes entry wise multiplication. Based on the value of |A|, the
new operator redistributes some of the wolves to achieve a right
balance between exploration and exploitation according to the LF-
based jumps. In those cases that the modified GWO (without LF)
can obtain superior solutions, there is a possibility in LGWO to use
and improve them as better-quality results. Also, this operator can
enhance the exploitive behaviors of wolves in last iterations. Here,
␣ is a random quantity for each dimension of wolves. Therefore,
when |A| > 0.5, the operator is updated as:
→ → → → →
, (16) X new (t) = 0.5 × ( X ˛ − A 1 D ˛ + X ˇ
|A| < 0.5
→ →
− A 2 D ˇ ) + rand(size(D)) ⊕ Levi(ˇ), (17)
where D is dimension. Mantegna technique [60] is an accurate
strategy to provide stochastic variables whose their probability
densities are converged to Lévy steady distribution that is con-
trolled by parameter ␣ (0.3< ␣ < 1.99). Therefore, the Mantegna
strategy is utilized here to obtain LF throughout the searching pro-
120 A.A. Heidari, P. Pahlavani / Applied Soft Computing 60 (2017) 115–134

cess. In this regards, in Eq. (17), the step size can be formulated N
as:
u → → a, p, A, C
rand(size(Dim)) ⊕ Levi(ˇ)∼0.01 ( X (t) − X ˛ (t)), (18)
v−ˇ
Xα to be the best wolf
where u and v values should be attained based on normal distribu- Xβ to be the second best wolf
tions; (t<T) or (stopping condition) do
for each wolf
u∼N(0, u2 ), v∼N(0, v2 ), (19)
Update the position of current wolves by Eq. (16)
with Perform GS by Eq. (21)
 1 end for
 (1 + ˇ) sin(
ˇ
)
ˇ
a, p, A, C
2
u = ˇ−1
, V = 1, (20)
1+ˇ
( 2
)ˇ ×2 2
Xα and Xβ
t = t+1
where  represents the conventional gamma function. In this work,
end while
ˇ parameter is not constant, but a random value inside the [0,
2] interval should be selected in every iteration for LF process. Xα
By this strategy, LF will generate many small and occasionally Fig. 5. Pseudo-code of LGWO algorithm.
long-distance jumps. This random ˇ parameter can improve both
exploitation and exploration trends over the course of iterations
[49]. The visual effect of the LF-based motions on the searching
patterns of wolves is illustrated in Fig. 4.
The subsequent remarks can explain the aspects that the mod-
ified Lévy-based operator qualifies LGWO for outperforming the
basic GWO technique:

• The LGWO can still demonstrate the main features of the basic
GWO in exploration and exploitation tendencies.
• The LF-based jumps can redistribute wolves around the fitness
landscape to prevent the population from the loss of diversity
and to put more emphasis on the global searching tendency once
it is required.
• The LF-based hunting technique permits all artificial hunters to
explore and localize the possible situations of the victim more
effectually.
• In the case of stagnation, Lévy-triggered searching (hunting) pat-
terns can help GWO to jump out of them toward new better
positions.
• LF with random ˇ can boost both exploration and occasionally
exploitation trends by consecutively generating a series of small
and big jumps during the search.
• Based on |A| and random jumps of LF, the LGWO has an enhanced
tendency for global search and it often put emphasis on more
exploration. The LGWO also can lay emphasis on further exploita- Fig. 6. Flowchart of LGWO algorithm.
tion in the last steps.

Additionally, referring to the greedy selection (GS) strategy from
DE algorithm, the concept of “survival of the fittest” is utilized here
with the probability p. According to this strategy, new superior
positions in each generation can continue to be more enriched for
the next generations and the worse ones are also disregarded. This
operator is formulated as:
 → → →
→ X (t) f ( X new (t)) > f ( X (t))andrnew < p
X (t + 1) =
→
X new (t) otherwise
where rnew and p are random values inside (0, 1), f(X(t)) is the fit-
ness of the last position, and Xnew (t) represents the new position
attained by Eq. (16). The p value in Eq. (21) is determined randomly
inside interval [0, 1] in each iteration. This choice can emphasize
on the random nature of LGWO. By integrating GS into LGWO, the
searching capabilities are more enriched because each pioneer wolf
gets the chance to survive and then share its observed info with
other hunters during the next steps of the searching process. Also, it
is advantageous for stabilizing essential exploration and exploita-
tion trends to encourage LGWO for converging to better-quality
solutions.
The pseudocode and flowchart of LGWO are reported in
Figs. 5 and 6, respectively. In the next section, the proposed LGWO
will be evaluated based on diverse numerical instances.
(21) 4. Experimental results and discussion
Here, in order to investigate new LGWO’s performance, exper-
imental simulations are implemented for various optimization
tasks. These classic benchmark functions have been employed by
various researchers to assess their algorithms [23,61–64]. For this
purpose, 29 unconstrained problems including a set of composition
test cases from CEC 2005 are evaluated [65]. Furthermore, 30 mod-
ern benchmarks from CEC 2014 and 14 real-world test cases from
CEC2011 are used as the second and third experiments, respec-
tively.
 A.A. Heidari, P. Pahlavani / Applied Soft Computing 60 (2017) 115–134 121

Table 1
Results of LGWO with different classes.

Problem/Algorithm LGWO-I LGWO-II LGWO-III LGWO-IV LGWO-V LGWO-VI

Number of leaders 1 2 3 4 5 6

FC23 1.02 1 1.06 1.06 1.08 1.12

FC24 1.05 1 1.06 1.06 1.06 1.14
FC25 1.12 1 1.15 1.15 10.02 1.23
FC26 1.20 1 1.25 2.25 1.27 1.32
FC27 1.05 1 1.08 1.08 1.12 1.19
FC28 1.02 1 1.03 1.06 1.05 1.26
FC29 1.10 1 1.11 1.10 1.18 2.31
FC30 1.02 1 1.03 2.02 1.56 10.12

Table 2 These parameters are chosen based on the recommendations in

The parameters of optimizers.
Optimizer Description
PSO c1 , c2 = 2, ω2 = 0.9, ω1 = 0.2
CS pa = 0.25
FA ␣ = 0.5, ˇ = 0.2,  = 1
GSA Go = 100, ␣ = 20
BA A = 0.5, r = 0.5, ε = 0.1
DE F = 0.5, CR = 0.4
GWO a0 = 2
LGWO a0 = 2, ˇ ∼ U(0,2), p ∼ U(0,1)
For these experiments, each technique is performed a Windows
7 system using Intel Core i2, 2 GHz, 4G RAM and Matlab R2013a. No
commercial GWO-based tool was applied in this research.
Before comprehensive tests, a comparative study is carried out
to demonstrate why using three types of wolves in LGWO is prefer-
able to other cases with additional or fewer classes. The LGWO with
different classes is evaluated on eight composition functions from
CEC 2014 (see Table 8). The complicated fitness landscapes of these
problems are necessary to reveal the effects of the number of lead-
ers on the performance of LGWO. For each function, LGWO with 1,
2, 3, 4, and 5 leaders (2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 classes of wolves) ran 30 times.
The normalized average results for these problems are reported in
Table 1.
Note that these results are normalized in each row according
to the lowest values. Therefore, the comparison of results between
different rows cannot be either meaningful or necessary. Based on
the achieved results, LGWO with three classes of wolves can find
better results in comparison to those of the other versions. The
reason is that using more leaders will emphasize on exploitation
rather than exploration and it seems that this strategy cannot avoid
LGWO from stagnation behaviors.
Therefore, the proposed modifications can assist LGWO in strik-
ing a balance between exploration and exploitation capacities. The
numerical results of LGWO with 3 classes (␣, ˇ, ω) for these bench-
marks are reported in the next sections.
4.1. Experiment results and analysis on benchmark set 1
In order to assess the efficiency of proposed LGWO for treating
different optimization problems, a series of benchmarks are utilized
in experiment 1. Two well-established algorithms are employed to
substantiate LGWO in experiment 1 including PSO [66] and DE [67].
Moreover, the LGWO is compared with GWO [23] as the original
method. It also compared with BA [68] that inspires the echoloca-
tion strategies of bats, with adaptive pulse rates of emission and
loudness, CS [47] that mimics the breeding strategies of a bird fam-
ily, GSA [69] as a well-known optimizer used in many works, and
FA [70] as prior robust approach that inspires the life of flash-
ing fireflies. The performance of LGWO is investigated based on
30 independent runs for realizing each problem over 500 internal
loops. The initial parameters of algorithms are reported in Table 2.
aforementioned works.
Referring to Derrac et al. [71], statistical tests should be used
to judge the performance of the evaluated optimizers. Statistical
tests reflect each test’s results and verify that the differences in the
results are statistically significant. To statistically assess the new
LGWO compared to the other methodologies, Wilcoxon rank-sum
test [71] at 5% significance degree is also employed for evaluated
test systems.
The formulation of classic benchmark problems is provided in
Table 3. In addition, Table 4 demonstrates the description of F24-
F29 composition test cases [23]. Some of the F01-F23 benchmarks
are also selected to be illustrated in Figs. 7–9.
4.1.1. Exploitation analysis
Functions F01–F07 should be classified as unimodal test cases
with only one global best. The overall exploitation tendency of
LGWO method can be investigated using these test beds. Stan-
dard deviation (STD) besides average (Ave) results of LGWO and
other methods are reported in Tables 5–7. Superior results are high-
lighted inside the corresponding tables. Meanwhile, the optimizers
are sorted according to their averages. In addition, the average rank
is computed to attain the overall rank of the methods. The sum-
mary of statistical test results is reflected in all Tables. In these
tables, +, − and ≈ show that the performance of the LGWO is statis-
tically superior to, inferior to, and similar to the second optimizer,
respectively.
It can be perceived from Table 5 that LGWO can obtain very com-
petitive solutions compared to other algorithms. For F01-F07, the
solutions of LGWO demonstrate that it is capable of outperforming
the conventional GWO. The solutions of LGWO are also superior
to the results of the other evaluated techniques in the most of 7
test cases (F01, F02, F03, F04, and F07). Based on last raw, it can be
detected that LGWO is competent to be ranked as one. The over-
all rank of algorithms indicates that the LGWO can outperform DE,
GWO, CS, FA, GSA, PSO, and BA algorithms, respectively. It can be
recognized from the results on F01-F07 that the LGWO is capable
of attaining satisfactory solutions with an appropriate exploitation
potential. This reason is that the proposed Lévy-embedded mecha-
nisms can stimulate both exploration and exploitation tendencies
of the conventional GWO, effectively. Therefore, the proposed LF-
based mechanisms increase the propensity of the algorithm for
generating more diminutive LF-based jumps based on higher val-
ues of stability index. This feature is advantageous for exploiting
new areas nearby the newly explored solutions. For that reason,
it observed that the new algorithmic modifications have enriched
the exploitation trends of GWO in dealing with unimodal problems
such as F01 to F07 test cases.
4.1.2. Exploration analysis
Multimodal test beds (F08-F23) are appropriate to validate the
exploration potential of different optimizers. Based on the results
on Tables 6 and 7, LGWO is capable of exploring very competitive
 122
Table 3
descriptions of the benchmark problems (C: Characteristics, U: Unimodal, M: Multimodal, H: L: Low-dimensional, High-dimensional, DM: dimension, OPT: Optimum) [23].

Id C Formulation DM Limits OPT

n 2
F01 (x) =
F01 UH

ni=1 xi n 30 [−100,100] 0
F02 UH F02 (x) = |xi | + |xi | 30 [−10,10] 0

i=1
n
i i=12
F03 UH F03 (x) = ( xj ) 30 [−100,100] 0
i=1 j−1
F04 UH F04 (x) = maxi |xi |, 1 ≤ i ≤ n 30 [−100,100] 0

n−1  2 2

F05 UH F05 (x) = 100(xi+1 − xi2 ) + (xi − 1) 30 [−30,30] 0

A.A. Heidari, P. Pahlavani / Applied Soft Computing 60 (2017) 115–134

n−1
i=1
2
F06 UH F06 (x) = ([xi + 0.5]) 30 [−100,100] 0

i=1
n−1
F07 UH F07 (x) = ixi4 + random [0, 1)

i=1
n
 30 [−1.28,1.28] 0
F08 (x) = − xi sin( |xi |) −418.9829 × n
F08 MH

i=1
n
  30 [−500,500]
F09 MH F09 (x) = xi2 − 10 cos(2xi ) + 10 30 [−5.12,5.12] 0
i=1 
n
n
1
F10 MH F10 (x) = −20 exp(−0.2 x2 ) − exp( 1n cos(2xi )) + 20 + e
−4

n n2  i=1 i
n xi
i=1
30 [−32,32] 0
F11 MH F11 (x) = 2.5 × 10 xi − cos( √ ) + 1 30 [−600,600] 0

i=1
n−1
i=1 i
 n 
 2
 2
 xi + 1
k(xi − a)m xi > a
F12 MH F12 (x) = 10 sin (yi ) + (yi − 1) 1 + 10 sin (yi+1 ) + (yn − 1)2 + u (xi , 10, 100, 4) , yi = 1 + , u (xi , a, k, m) = 0 −a < xi < a 30 [−50,50] 0
n 4

i=1
   
i=1 k(−xi − a)m xi < −a

n (xi − 1)
2 2
1 + sin (3xi + 1)
n
F13 MH F13 (x) = 0.1
2
sin (3xi ) + 2
 2
 + u(xi , 5, 100, 4) 30 [−50,50] 0
i=1
+(xn − 1) 1 + sin (2xn ) i=1

25 −1
F14 ML 1
F14 (x) = ( 500 +
j=1

2 1 6
) 2 [−65,65] 1
j+ (xi −aij )
  i=1
 2

11 x1 b2 +bi x2
i
F15 ML F15 (x) = ai − 4 [−5,5] 0.00030
i=1 b2 +bi x3 +x4
i
1 6
F16 ML F16 (x) = 4x12− 2.1x14 + x + x1 x2 − 4x22 + 4x24
3 1
2 [−5,5] −1.0316
2
F17 (x) = (x2 − 5.12 x12 + 5
x − 6) + 10(1 − 8 1
+ 10
F17 ML
 4  1  ) cos x1
    2 [−5,5] 0.398
F18 ML F18 (x) = 1 + (x1 + x2 + 1)2 19 − 14x1 + 3x12 − 14x2 + 6x1 x2 + 3x22 × 30 + (2x1 − 3x2 )2 × 18 − 32x1 + 12x12 + 48x2 − 36x1 x2 + 27x22 2 [−2,2] 3

4 
 2 
3
F19 ML F19 (x) = − ci exp − aij xj − pij 3 [1,3] −3.86

i=1


j=1
2 
4 6
F20 ML F20 (x) = − ci exp − aij xj − pij 6 [0,1] −3.32
i=1 j=1

5  T
−1
F21 ML F21 (x) = − (X − ai ) (X − ai ) + ci 4 [0,10] −10.1532

7 
i=1
T
−1
F22 ML F22 (x) = − (X − ai ) (X − ai ) + ci 4 [0,10] −10.4028

i=1
10
 T
−1
F23 ML F23 (x) = − (X − ai ) (X − ai ) + ci 4 [0,10] −10.5363
i=1
 A.A. Heidari, P. Pahlavani / Applied Soft Computing 60 (2017) 115–134 123

Table 4
Composition benchmarks [23].

ID Function D Bounds GM

f1 , f2 , f3 , ..., f10 = Sphere’sFunction

F24 [ı1 , ı2 , ı3 , ..., ı10 ] = [1, 1, 1, ..., 1] 10 [−5,5] 0
[
1 ,
2 ,
3 , ...,
10 ] = [5/100,5/100,...,5/100]
f1 , f2 , f3 , ..., f10 = Griewank’sfunction
F25 [ı1 , ı2 , ı3 , ..., ı10 ] = [1, 1, 1, ..., 1] 10 [−5,5] 0
[
1 ,
2 ,
3 , ...,
10 ] = [5/100,5/100,...,5/100]
f1 , f2 , f3 , ..., f10 = Griewank’sfunction
F26 [ı1 , ı2 , ı3 , ..., ı10 ] = [1, 1, 1, ..., 1] 10 [−5,5] 0
[
1 ,
2 ,
3 , ...,
10 ] = [1, 1, 1, ..., 1]
f1 , f2 = Ackley’sFunction
f3 , f4 = Rastrigin’sFunction
f5 , f6 = Weierstras’sFunction
F27 f7 , f8 = Griewank’sFunction 10 [−5,5] 0
f9 , f10 = Sphere’sFunction
[ı1 , ı2 , ı3 , ..., ı10 ] = [1, 1, 1, ..., 1]
[
1 ,
2 ,
3 , ...,
10 ] = [5/32, 5/32, 1, 1, 5/0.5, 5/0.5, 5/100, 5/100, 5/100, 5/100]
f1 , f2 = Rastrigin’sFunction
f3 , f4 = Weierstras’sFunction
f5 , f6 = Griewank’sFunction
F28 f7 , f8 = Ackley’sFunction 10 [−5,5] 0
f9 , f10 = Sphere’sFunction
[ı1 , ı2 , ı3 , ..., ı10 ] = [1, 1, 1, ..., 1]
[
1 ,
2 ,
3 , ...,
10 ] = [1/5, 1/5, 5/0.5, 5/0.5, 5/100, 5/100, 5/32, 5/32, 5/100, 5/100]
f1 , f2 = Rastrigin’sFunction
f3 , f4 = Weierstras’sFunction
f5 , f6 = Griewank’sFunction
f7 , f8 = Ackley’sFunction
F29 10 [−5,5] 0
f9 , f10 = Sphere’sFunction
[ı1 , ı2 , ı3 , ..., ı10 ] = [0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1]
[
1 ,
2 ,
3 , ...,
10 ] = [0.1 ∗ 1/5, 0.2 ∗ 1/5, 0.3 ∗ 5/0.5, 0.4 ∗ 5/0.5,...
0.5 ∗ 5/100, 0.6 ∗ 5/100, 0.7 ∗ 5/32, 0.8 ∗ 5/32, 0.9 ∗ 5/100, 1 ∗ 5/100]

Fig. 7. 3-D map for 2D forms of F07, F09, F10 benchmarks.

Fig. 8. 3-D map for 2D forms of F12, F13, F14 benchmark.

124 A.A. Heidari, P. Pahlavani / Applied Soft Computing 60 (2017) 115–134

Fig. 9. 3-D map for 2-D forms of F19, F21, F23 benchmarks.

Table 5
Results for unimodal F01–F07 functions.

F GWO CS PSO FA GSA BA DE LGWO

F01 Ave 6.32E − 28 5.78E − 03 0.000128 0.040411 2.12E − 16 0.767411 7.17E − 12 3.17E − 30
STD 5.18E − 05 2.41E − 03 0.000289 0.018201 5.21E − 17 0.688170 2.1E − 14 4.07E − 20
Rank(Test) 2 (+) 6 (+) 5 (+) 7 (+) 3 (+) 8 (+) 4 (+) 1
F02 Ave 8.38E − 17 2.08E − 01 0.048122 0.061744 0.051774 0.327110 1.10E − 07 5.39E − 19
STD 0.034082 3.17E − 02 0.041385 0.017173 0.231239 2.160233 3.35E − 08 0.010729
Rank(Test) 2 (+) 7 (+) 4 (+) 6 (+) 5 (+) 8 (+) 3 (+) 1
F03 Ave 4.09E − 06 2.63E − 01 64.17332 0.050016 455.1004 0.129385 8.23E − 07 8.12E − 08
STD 21.70012 2.97E − 02 18.71810 0.011250 124.7488 0.688058 2.31E − 07 2.053381
Rank(Test) 3 (+) 6 (+) 7 (+) 4 (+) 8 (+) 5 (+) 2 (+) 1
F04 Ave 8.19E − 07 1.43E − 05 1.388550 0.213711 8.021015 0.193882 1.18E − 04 1.17E − 08
STD 1.741844 4.83E − 06 0.325442 0.028923 1.493110 0.641056 1.12E − 05 1.316448
Rank(Test) 2 (+) 3 (+) 7 (+) 6 (+) 8 (+) 5 (+) 4 (−) 1
F05 Ave 24.74168 0.008121 85.03224 3.005223 58.38920 0.321710 0 8.350714
STD 51.82238 0.054326 50.40314 1.563822 56.00025 0.299057 0 5.336001
Rank(Test) 6 (+) 2 (+) 8 (+) 4 (+) 7 (+) 3 (+) 1 (−) 5
F06 Ave 0.798003 6.17E − 04 0.000425 0.045230 8.31E − 14 0.712085 2.88E − 03 2.69E − 04
STD 0.001289 2.80E − 05 1.27E − 05 0.029208 7.70E − 15 0.892204 1.45E − 05 0.000023
Rank(Test) 8 (+) 4 (+) 3 (+) 6 (+) 1 (+) 7 (+) 5 (+) 2
F07 Ave 0.003781 0.028551 0.102744 0.008561 0.088145 0.153102 2.41E − 02 3.02E − 03
STD 0.214005 0.001277 0.042350 0.004512 0.044009 0.108730 1.12E − 03 0.001102
Rank(Test) 2 (+) 5 (≈) 7 (+) 3 (≈) 6 (+) 8 (+) 4 (+) 1

Average Rank 3.571429 4.714286 5.857143 5.142857 5.428571 6.285714 3.285714 1.714286
Overall Rank 3 4 7 5 6 8 2 1
+/−/≈ 7/0/0 6/0/1 7/0/0 6/0/1 7/0/0 7/0/0 5/2/0 45/2/2

Bold values in these table indicates the “best result” achieved by a specific method (GWO, CS, PSO, etc) for a considered function F (F01, F02, etc).

Table 6
Results for multimodal F08–F13 functions.

F GWO CS PSO FA GSA BA DE LGWO

F08 Ave −4021.351 −2128.913 −4258.206 −1295.180 −2688.746 −1002.711 −1538.1527 −3365.8658
STD 315.447 0.008418 512.4180 302.4846 475.2366 831.0054 582.4522 296.12698
Rank(Test) 2 (+) 5 (−) 1 (+) 7 (+) 4 (+) 8 (+) 6 (+) 3
F09 Ave 0.302682 0.2463220 34.18946 0.283300 21.56339 1.200358 12.414778 0.094579
STD 25.26322 0.001816 8.296435 0.211472 5.1287386 0.642822 9.2482451 21.580073
Rank(Test) 4 (+) 2 (≈) 8 (+) 3 (−) 7 (+) 5 (−) 6 (+) 1
F10 Ave 1.12E − 13 4.01E − 10 0.258511 0.142184 0.096552 0.130025 2.85E − 10 2.12E − 15
STD 0.085041 5.21E − 09 0.489455 0.042488 0.195096 0.064851 3.1E − 08 0.0429752
Rank(Test) 2 (≈) 4 (+) 8 (+) 7 (+) 5 (+) 6 (+) 3 (+) 1
F11 Ave 0.005102 0.185228 0.008922 0.086059 12.33364 1.138114 8.15E − 04 0.0000242
STD 0.006325 0.039805 0.009626 0.028002 4.801125 0.637005 1.41E − 06 0.0000839
Rank(Test) 3 (+) 6 (+) 4 (+) 5 (+) 8 (+) 7 (+) 2 (+) 1
F12 Ave 0.061741 0.0125808 0.007241 0.131795 2.112974 0.409255 8.21E − 03 7.12E − 04
STD 0.039705 4.12E − 09 0.003357 0.253518 0.058956 0.810752 1.17E − 04 0.0030027
Rank(Test) 5 (+) 4 (−) 2 (≈) 6 (+) 8 (+) 7 (+) 3 (+) 1
F13 Ave 0.512798 0.485117 0.017158 0.002966 4.200091 0.362611 5.15E − 06 3.94E − 07
STD 0.005821 6.85E − 08 0.018251 0.001452 2.911045 0.189552 1.52E − 07 0.0002098
Rank(Test) 7 (+) 6 (−) 4 (+) 3 (≈) 8 (+) 5 (+) 2 (−) 1

Average Rank 3.833333 4.5 4.5 5.166667 6.666667 6.333333 3.666667 1.333333
Overall Rank 3 4 4 6 8 7 2 1
Overall +/−/≈ 5/0/1 2/3/1 5/0/1 4/1/1 6/0/0 5/1/0 5/1/0 32/6/4

Bold values in these table indicates the “best result” achieved by a specific method (GWO, CS, PSO, etc) for a considered function F (F01, F02, etc).
 A.A. Heidari, P. Pahlavani / Applied Soft Computing 60 (2017) 115–134 125

Table 7
Results for fixed-dimension multimodal F14–F23 test cases.

F GWO CS PSO FA GSA BA DE LGWO

F14 Ave 4.013365 1.423652 3.836673 3.026592 4.980711 3.500296 0.9948522 1.1493786
STD 4.030052 1.30E − 02 3.100205 1.932225 3.955225 2.305466 2.56E − 11 2.9072365
Rank(Test) 7 (+) 3 (+) 6 (+) 4 (+) 8 (+) 5 (+) 1 (+) 2
F15 Ave 0.0005837 5.03E − 04 0.000612 0.0010 0.003569 7.03E − 03 5.48E − 05 2.53E − 06
STD 0.0007215 1.11E − 04 0.000198 4.60E − 04 0.001798 2.11E − 03 1.18E − 06 3.95E − 04
Rank(Test) 4 (+) 3 (+) 5 (+) 6 (+) 7 (+) 8 (+) 2 (+) 1
F16 Ave −1.03163 −1.03163 −1.03163 −1.03160 −1.03163 −1.03163 −1.03163 −1.03163
STD 4.3360058 1.49E − 08 6.27E − 16 1.65E − 07 4.72E − 16 2.452254 3.17E − 11 3.2E − 12
Rank(Test) 1 (≈) 1 (≈) 1 (≈) 8 (≈) 1 (≈) 1 (≈) 1 (≈) 1
F17 Ave 0.397889 0.39795 0.397901 0.397985 0.397887 0.397900 0.397887 0.397887
STD 1.28E − 05 3.24E − 06 0 3.56E − 08 0 1.27E − 02 8.24E − 07 0
Rank(Test) 4 (+) 7 (+) 6 (≈) 8 (+) 1 (≈) 5 (+) 1 (+) 1
F18 Ave 3.000028 3.00135 3.0001 3.012363 3.000000 3.000000 3.000000 3.000000
STD 0.012257 0.00258 7.01E − 06 0.052675 4.29E − 14 0.056167 1.58E − 18 2.40E − 2
Rank(Test) 5 (+) 7 (+) 6 (−) 8 (+) 1 (≈) 1 (≈) 1 (−) 1
F19 Ave −3.86263 −3.86288 −3.86280 −3.86137 −3.86250 −3.86280 −3.86280 −3.86288
STD 2.122054 1.85E − 05 1.89E − 12 3.81E − 03 3.15E − 15 1.104492 1.51E − 20 1.47E − 05
Rank(Test) 6 (−) 1 (+) 3 (−) 8 (−) 7 (+) 3 (−) 3 (+) 1
F20 Ave −3.28635 −3.32185 −3.26632 −3.28415 −3.31862 −3.322084 −3.2176 −3.32101
STD 0.268112 7.21E − 03 0.060413 0.070285 4.15E − 05 0.058045 0.63565 0.038626
Rank(Test) 5 (+) 2 (−) 7 (+) 6 (+) 4 (+) 1 (+) 8 (+) 3
F21 Ave −10.1510 −9.72828 −7.63838 −6.92669 −5.92533 −9.203955 −10.1527 −10.15304
STD 9.120014 0.288102 3.672215 3.257075 3.730022 3.0581205 6.53E − 05 5.1404578
Rank(Test) 3 (+) 4 (−) 6 (+) 7 (+) 8 (+) 5 (+) 2 (+) 1
F22 Ave −10.255746 −9.87298 −7.36982 −10.4008 −9.630195 −9.23499 −10.4028 −10.4028
STD 8.6952230 0.320344 3.255826 1.198224 2.8100546 3.225782 2.625526 2.200478
Rank(Test) 4 (≈) 5 (+) 8 (+) 3 (≈) 6 (+) 7 (+) 1 (+) 1
F23 Ave −10.53435 −9.78223 −9.968005 −10.2182 −10.95211 −10.98552 −10.5364 −10.53640
STD 8.4924069 0.500213 1.980510 1.240585 1.41E − 14 10.29354 1.055221 2.0122878
Rank(Test) 5 (+) 8 (+) 7 (+) 6 (+) 2 (−) 1 (+) 3 (+) 3

Average Rank 4.4 4.1 5.5 6.4 4.5 3.7 2.3 1.5
Overall Rank 5 4 7 8 6 3 2 1
+/−/≈ 7/1/2 7/2/1 6/2/2 7/1/2 6/3/1 7/1/2 8/1/1 48/11/11

Bold values in these table indicates the “best result” achieved by a specific method (GWO, CS, PSO, etc) for a considered function F (F01, F02, etc).

solutions on F08-F23 test cases. The LGWO can obtain the best solu-
tions compared to other methods for F09, F10, F11, F12, F13, F15,
F16, F17, F18, F19, F21, and F22. Based on overall ranking results
on Table 6, LGWO is capable of outperforming the DE, CS, GWO, FA,
PSO, and BA algorithms on multimodal cases. Statistical tests also
support that the results of LGWO are better than other methods on
76% of evaluations. Based on STD index, the accuracy of the results
is improved compared to GWO.
The relative performance of LGWO affirms that it has a satis-
factory explorative tendency, especially when the target problems
(such as F08, F13) have several LO. This reason is that the proposed
Lévy-embedded mechanisms can stimulate both exploration and
exploitation tendencies of the conventional GWO, effectively. It
was observed that the proposed LF-based mechanisms can enrich
the explorative behaviors of GWO by generating more lengthy LF-
based jumps. The lower values of stability index can assist wolves in
generating more explorative jumps. This feature can be seen when
LGWO needs to explore unseen areas of the problem landscape.
Accordingly, the new LF-based operators have assisted GWO in
striking a fine balance between global and local search inclinations.
Based on Table 7, it is seen that LGWO’s performance is bet-
ter than DE, GWO, and other compared techniques. Additionally,
conventional GWO can still reveal an efficient performance com-
pared to FA, PSO, BA, GSA, and CS; and go beyond them occasionally.
According to statistical results, the LGWO is superior to other
approaches in 48 cases. For F14-F23, the average results of LGWO
are statistically better than those of GWO, FA, CS, BA on 7, PSO and
GSA on 6, DE on 8 independent simulations. For some problems
such as F18, F19, and F20, it is observed that the obtained results
are very competitive and similar. The reason is that these problems
are not challenging enough for evaluated optimizers. Based on the
theorem of “no free lunch” (NFL), a universally best optimizer for
all classes of problems does not exist, [72,73]. Note that LGWO is
not an exception.
Based on the overall results, it can be perceived that exploration
capacity of the GWO is extended as a result of the proposed Lévy-
embedded searching steps. Besides, the GS updating strategy in
LGWO can decrease the chance of the LGWO falling into LO. Hence,
the exploration tendency of LGWO is desirable as well.
4.1.3. The LO escaping capacity
Composition test beds can be utilized to critic the performance
of MA from different aspects. The results in Table 8 indicate that
LGWO can demonstrate an efficient performance compared to
other algorithms on F27, F28 and F29 cases. It can perform as the
second best on F25 and F26 test cases. According to total ranks,
the LGWO is the most effective method and can find better opti-
mums compared to previous optimizers. From statistical tests, it is
observed that the performance of LGWO on F24-F29 is meaning-
fully better than the CS, PSO, FA, and BA algorithms for all trials. In
these experiments, GWO performs better that DE, which is capable
of optimizing the functions as the third best method. It is seen that
LGWO is statistically superior for 85% of pair-wise comparisons.
From Table 8, it can be detected that the modified Lévy-based
operators in LGWO can effectively assist this algorithm in regaining
a correct balance amongst exploration and exploitation tendencies.
In addition, the effects of the new modifications on LGWO also con-
firm that LGWO with GS strategy can efficaciously escape from LO in
dealing with composition test cases. In circumstances that GWO is
stuck in LO or it cannot balance between exploration and exploita-
tion, it was observed that the proposed mechanisms can improve
its performance and quality of the results.
126 A.A. Heidari, P. Pahlavani / Applied Soft Computing 60 (2017) 115–134

Table 8
Results for composition F24–F29 test cases.

F GWO CS PSO FA GSA BA DE LGWO

F24 Ave 38.36621 102 98 139.7366 2.23E − 15 173.2038 7.19E − 01 23.093361

STD 58.00258 107.38239 82.369 86.00859 1.46E − 15 103.96633 2.52E − 01 31.926050
Rank(Test) 4 (+) 6 (+) 5 (+) 7 (+) 1 (−) 8 (+) 2 (−) 3
F25 Ave 89.30698 149.1103 146.1082 293.3381 193.2573 456.4019 35.89622 67.390577
STD 86.36999 88.85123 15.10336 98.12579 61.09312 136.9227 15.8510 65.120068
Rank(Test) 3 (≈) 5 (+) 4 (+) 7 (+) 6 (+) 8 (+) 1 (+) 2
F26 Ave 62.71469 286.2597 153.9006 729.69083 177.52980 587.230274 164.1057 69.002458
STD 66.43023 79.15931 30.70365 198.1229 85.22842 136.387762 29.85250 65.820246
Rank(Test) 1 (−) 6 (+) 3 (+) 8 (+) 5 (+) 7 (+) 4 (+) 2
F27 Ave 123.1235 401.5247 314.3 810.7268 167.79662 754.387768 327.1741 102.63363
STD 163.9937 98.16459 20.066 106.1199 78.160605 152.113482 22.10388 48.660546
Rank(Test) 2 (+) 6 (+) 4 (+) 8 (+) 3 (≈) 7 (+) 5 (+) 1
F28 Ave 102.1429 212.7639 83.45 122.67393 193.90902 540.095791 62.41042 53.668553
STD 81.25536 205.9728 101.11 209.75633 39.053480 211.13330 37.52588 49.305029
Rank(Test) 4 (+) 7 (+) 3 (+) 5 (+) 6 (+) 8 (+) 2 (+) 1
F29 Ave 43.14216 812.2943 861.42 849.36873 134.07588 817.243657 504.8521 37.80675
STD 84.48573 191.5134 125.81 114.11353 83.90841 142.520364 41.80736 56.383689
Rank(Test) 2 (≈) 5 (+) 8 (+) 7 (+) 3 (+) 6 (+) 4 (+) 1

Average Rank 2.666667 5.833333 4.5 7 4 7.333333 3 1.666667

Overall Rank 2 6 5 7 4 8 3 1
+/−/≈ 3/1/2 6/0/0 6/0/0 6/0/0 4/1//1 6/0/0 5/1/0 36/3/3

Bold values in these table indicates the “best result” achieved by a specific method (GWO, CS, PSO, etc) for a considered function F (F01, F02, etc).

4.1.4. Convergence analysis
The convergence features of LGWO and other approaches in
handling F01-F07 functions are compared to the GWO and PSO in
Fig. 10. The PSO is selected because it often performs as a bench-
mark method with superior convergence styles in the literature
is set as [N/2] and  is set to be 0.3 in CMA-ES [74]; ps is
[49]. A convergence window is also provided in Fig. 10. It iden-
tifies the intervals that LGWO outperforms GWO. From Fig. 10, it
can be found that LGWO will converge to superior results as time
continues. During more iteration, LGWO can approximate more
accurate solutions in the vicinity of the optimum solutions. In addi-
tion, accelerated convergence trends can be realized in the curves
of LGWO compared to GWO. This trend confirms that LGWO can
lay emphasis on further exploitation and local search in concluding
steps. These plots indicate that the LGWO can effectively improve
the fitness of all wolves and guarantee to exploit enhanced results.
For F09-F16 benchmarks, the convergence plots are exposed in
Fig. 11. According to Fig. 11, LGWO still outperforms GWO in terms
of convergence rate in solving F09, F10, F11, F14, F15, F19, F20, F21,
and F23. By considering the acceleration of GWO and PSO, plots of
LGWO confirm that it can handle exploration of the search space
more quickly.
Based on these figures, it can be discovered that the modified
Lévy-based operators and GS strategy can deepen the searching
capabilities of GWO. The proposed LGWO algorithm can demon-
strate a more efficient performance compared to other methods
with better convergence trends.
4.2. Experiment results and analysis on benchmark set 2
In this section, 30 IEEE CEC 2014 test beds are utilized to inves-
tigate the performance of LGWO. Table 9 reviews some details of
these functions and more about them can be obtained from [74].
These problems have many unique features. In these problems, the
search range is [–100,100] and the dimension is fixed to 30.
To judge the efficiency of LGWO, the solutions are compared
with some state-of-the-art optimizers such as GWO [23], SOS
[75] that mimics the cooperative activities perceived amongst
organisms in nature and performs some core phases: mutual-
ism, commensalism and parasitism phases, evolution strategy with
covariance matrix adaptation (CMA-ES) [74] as a well-known evo-
lutionary method, CS [47] that has been improved by the LF random
walk procedure, GSA [64] that simulates interactions among some
masses based on the laws of physics, and differential evolution
based on covariance and bimodal distribution (CoBiDE) [76] as an
amended DE variant.
The parameters of optimizers are set as their original articles,
hence,
set to 0.5 and pb is set to 0.4 in CoBiDE [76], also its mutation and
crossover operations are set as in [76]; for CS, ˇ is set to 1.50, p0 is
set as 0.25 as [47]; and for GSA, G0 is equal to 100 and ␣ is equal to
20 [64]. It should be noted that SOS has no initial parameters [75].
The dimension of the test cases is fixed to 30 and the maxi-
mum number of function evaluations (NFE) is 3 × 105 . For a fair
assessment, the benchmarks have been tested under the condition
of same NFE and maximum generation (MXG). Hence, the popu-
lation size has been set to 40 in SOS, since it utilizes four stages,
75 in CS, and 150 in the GSA, CoBiDE, and CMA-ES algorithms. The
obtained results are exposed in Tables 10–13 For each task, the
error values (f(x) − f(x0 )) are compared during 30 independent tri-
als. Note that x is the best result when a method ends and x0 is the
global optimum. Then, the methods are ranked based on the aver-
age values and the overall ranks are compared. The statistical tests
of experiment 2 are completed similar to those of experiment 1.
For the unimodal benchmarks, FC01 to FC03, the statistical
results of the compared techniques are reported in Table 10.
The results in Table 10 can reveal that LGWO has an improved
efficacy compared to GWO and the rest of optimizers in tackling
rotated unimodal problems in 30 dimensions. It is also seen that
the performance of CoBiDE, CS, GWO, CMA-ES, GSA, SOS methods
can be placed at the next stages, respectively. Moreover, GWO’s
performance was mediocre compared to LGWO, CoBiDE, and CS.
Note that the CS has the LF-based searching mechanisms as well.
According to the findings, one of the main features of LGWO
is that it has a promising exploration power compared to GWO.
The main reason is that the LF-based walks can improve the com-
petency of wolves in discovering the fruitful areas of the fitness
basins. The results on these benchmarks indicate that the LGWO
can show an efficient performance for unimodal problems.
For multimodal test beds, FC04 to FC16, statistical outcomes are
reported in Table 11.
From Table 11, it is observed that the performance of LGWO
appears comparable, but somewhat improved compared to the
other approaches. The LGWO ranks first on the shifted rotated
functions FC06, FC07, FC10, FC13, FC15, and FC16. However, LGWO
 A.A. Heidari, P. Pahlavani / Applied Soft Computing 60 (2017) 115–134 127

Fig. 10. Convergence curves of the LGWO, GWO, and PSO algorithms for F01-F07 test cases.

Table 9
Brief description of the CEC2014 benchmark Functions (OPT: Optimum, UM: Unimodal, MM: Multimodal, H: Hybrid, CP: Composition, NS: Non-separable, S: Separable, R:
Rotated, AS: Asymmetrical, NSS: Non-separable subcomponents, DFLB: Different features nearby various LO, DFVS: Different features for diverse variables subcomponents).

No. Name Properties OPT

FC01 Rotated high conditioned elliptic Function UM,NS, R, Quadratic ill-conditioned 100
FC02 Rotated bent cigar Function UM,NS, R, Smooth but narrow ridge 200
FC03 Rotated discus Function UM,NS, R, One sensitive direction 300
FC04 Shifted and rotated Rosenbrock’s Function MM, NS, R, Having a narrow valley from LO to 400
global peak
FC05 Shifted and rotated Ackley’s Function MM, NS, R 500
FC06 Shifted and rotated Weierstrass Function MM, NS, R, Continuous but differentiable just 600
on some points
FC07 Shifted and rotated Griewank’s Function MM, NS, R 700
FC08 Shifted Rastrigin’s Function MM, S, Have so many LO 800
FC09 Six Hump Camel Back MM, NS, Have so many LO 900
FC10 Shifted and rotated Rastrigin’s Function MM, S, R, Have so many LO and second 1000
superior LO is not close to the global best
FC11 Shifted and rotated Schwefel’s Function MM, NS, R, Have so many LO and second 1100
superior LO is not close to the global best
FC12 Shifted and rotated Katsuura Function MM, NS, R, Continuous yet not differentiable 1200
FC13 Shifted and rotated HappyCat Function MM, NS, R 1300
FC14 Shifted and rotated HGBat Function MM, NS, R 1400
FC15 Shifted and rotated Expanded Griewank’s plus MM, NS, R 1500
Rosenbrock’s Function
FC16 Shifted and rotated Expanded Scaffer’s F6 MM, NS, R 1600
Function
FC17 Hybrid Function 1 (N = 3) H, MM or UM, NSS, DFVS 1700
FC18 Hybrid Function 2 (N = 3) H, MM or UM, NSS, DFVS 1800
FC19 Hybrid Function 3 (N = 4) H, MM or UM, NSS, DFVS 1900
FC20 Hybrid Function 4 (N = 4) H, MM or UM, NSS, DFVS 2000
FC21 Hybrid Function 5 (N = 5) H, MM or UM, NSS, DFVS 2100
FC22 Hybrid Function 6 (N = 5) H, MM or UM, NSS, DFVS 2200
FC23 Composition Function 1 (N = 5) CP, MM, NS, AS, DFLB 2300
FC24 Composition Function 2 (N = 3) CP, MM, NS, DFLB 2400
FC25 Composition Function 3 (N = 3) CP, MM, NS, AS, DFLB 2500
FC26 Composition Function 4 (N = 5) CP, MM, NS, AS, DFLB 2600
FC27 Composition Function 5 (N = 5) CP, MM, NS, AS, DFLB 2700
FC28 Composition Function 6 (N = 5) CP, MM, NS, AS, DFLB 2800
FC29 Composition Function 7 (N = 3) CP, MM, NS, AS, DFLB, DFVS 2900
FC30 Composition Function 8 (N = 3) CP, MM, NS, AS, DFLB, DFVS 3000
128 A.A. Heidari, P. Pahlavani / Applied Soft Computing 60 (2017) 115–134

Fig. 11. Convergence curves of the LGWO, GWO, and PSO algorithms for the selected test cases.

Table 10
Statistical results for CEC2014 unimodal test beds.

No. Metrics SOS GSA CS CMA-ES CoBiDE GWO LGWO

FC01 Ave 6.9464E + 07 1.5688E + 07 2.2857E + 05 9.4219E + 04 5.8936E + 00 7.6852E + 03 5.2384E + 00

STD 2.9152E + 07 3.5776E + 06 7.8599E + 02 7.8851E + 04 4.8893E + 00 3.1896E + 02 3.8516E + 00
Rank(test) 7(+) 6(+) 5(+) 4(+) 2(+) 3(≈) 1
FC02 Ave 3.6133E + 09 8.8850E + 03 1.3853E + 02 2.5541E + 10 6.8552E − 02 3.6812E + 04 0
STD 7.7578E + 08 1.6241E + 03 4.7145E + 01 3.8502E + 09 7.1102E − 03 6.8900E + 04 0
Rank(test) 6(+) 4(+) 3(−) 7(+) 2(≈) 5(+) 1
FC03 Ave 2.3789E + 04 7.3158E + 04 1.0476E + 04 1.4469E + 04 5.9536E − 06 2.6852E + 04 1.4118E − 01
STD 1.3521E + 04 4.1273E + 03 5.5381E − 01 5.6612E + 03 6.1587E − 06 7.1130E + 03 2.2357E − 02
Rank(test) 5(+) 7(+) 3(≈) 4(+) 1(−) 6(+) 2

Average rank 6 5.666667 3.666667 5 1.666667 4.666667 1.333333

Overall rank 7 6 3 5 2 4 1
Overall +/−/≈ 3/0/0 3/0/0 1/1/1 3/0/0 1/1/1 2/0/1 13/2/3

Bold values in these table indicates the “best result” achieved by a specific method (GWO, CS, PSO, etc) for a considered function F (F01, F02, etc).

ranks worse than GSA, CMA-ES, and CS on the shifted rotated FC05
but still performs better than GWO. According to the overall ranking
results, LGWO can be considered as one of the best techniques com-
pared to other contending optimizers. Thoroughly, this can lead
one to recognize that LGWO can show an acceptable performance
on shifted rotated cases. According to Simon’s opinions, which is
discussed on [77], it is not generally meaningful to announce that
a metaheuristic can optimize better, or unwell, on rotated func-
tions. Based on overall statistical results on the last line of Table 11,
LGWO’s results can be significantly better than GWO, GSA, CS, and
other techniques in 57% of the comparisons.
The used LF distribution can conform to the exploitation and on
occasion the exploitation, which ensures that the LGWO can jump
out the LO and detect the fruitful areas of the fitness basins. Accord-
ingly, the utilized LF-based searching patterns can increase the
explorative capabilities of LGWO in dealing with the multimodal
tasks. In addition, LGWO can provide significantly better results
than other techniques such as SOS and CMA-ES. It can explore more
 A.A. Heidari, P. Pahlavani / Applied Soft Computing 60 (2017) 115–134 129

Table 11
Statistical results for CEC2014 multimodal test beds.

No. Metrics SOS GSA CS CMA-ES CoBiDE GWO LGWO

FC04 Ave 4.1439E + 02 3.6846E + 02 7.0723E + 01 2.5216E + 03 1.8689E + 01 1.5783E + 02 3.4587E + 01

STD 7.3228E + 01 2.9801E + 01 2.1300E + 01 5.3596E + 02 5.1328E + 00 5.1708E − 01 1.5437E + 01
Rank(test) 6(+) 5(+) 3(≈) 7(+) 1(−) 4(+) 2
FC05 Ave 2.0685E + 01 1.9999E + 01 2.0154E + 01 2.0000E + 01 2.0615E + 01 2.1062E + 01 2.0552E + 01
STD 5.3856E − 01 4.3911E − 03 2.8509E − 01 2.6288E − 05 3.9885E − 01 3.2385E − 02 3.1102E − 02
Rank(test) 6(+) 1(−) 3(+) 2(−) 5(+) 7(+) 4
FC06 Ave 2.4822E + 01 2.8755E + 01 2.4762E + 01 4.0855E + 01 3.0283E + 01 1.1518E + 01 9.7202E + 00
STD 1.9335E + 00 2.4932E + 00 4.1864E + 00 2.1285E + 00 1.8763E + 00 3.4809E−02 3.4086E + 00
Rank(test) 4(−) 5(−) 3(≈) 7(≈) 6(≈) 2(−) 1
FC07 Ave 3.3820E + 01 1.9852E − 04 7.4485E − 02 2.3115E + 02 2.9522E − 05 6.1837E + 00 0
STD 8.0225E + 00 2.0184E − 05 6.4093E − 02 2.8258E + 01 2.9005E − 02 2.2355E − 03 0
Rank(test) 6(+) 3(≈) 4(≈) 7(+) 2(≈) 5(≈) 1
FC08 Ave 8.0952E + 01 1.4012E + 02 7.1183E + 01 2.8308E + 02 2.8009E + 01 7.9273E + 01 2.9041E + 01
STD 7.8952E + 00 8.4125E + 00 1.1201E + 01 2.2058E + 01 1.2985E + 00 2.6646E−01 2.6399E + 01
Rank(test) 5(≈) 6(−) 3(−) 7(−) 1(−) 4(≈) 2
FC09 Ave 1.7262E + 02 1.6489E + 02 1.7805E + 02 3.2810E + 02 1.7844E + 02 8.6912E + 01 8.1445E + 01
STD 1.8996E + 01 1.2005E + 01 3.4720E + 01 7.6521E + 01 1.8089E + 01 4.8105E−01 3.1568E − 01
Rank(test) 4(+) 3(+) 5(−) 7(+) 6(+) 2(≈) 1
FC10 Ave 2.3950E + 03 3.3531E + 03 2.0203E + 03 2.6105E + 02 2.5822E + 03 2.1463E + 03 2.0025E + 03
STD 1.1958E + 02 3.1885E + 02 1.9374E + 02 1.0589E + 02 1.8727E + 02 2.8312E + 00 4.5224E + 02
Rank(test) 5(+) 7(+) 3(≈) 1(+) 6(+) 4(+) 2
FC11 Ave 4.4831E + 03 4.0567E + 03 4.4904E + 03 1.6864E + 02 5.6353E + 03 2.0121E + 03 2.0017E + 03
STD 4.0843E + 02 4.2429E + 02 3.3801E + 02 1.9833E + 02 2.3537E + 02 6.1086E + 00 6.4105E + 00
Rank(test) 5(+) 4(+) 6(+) 1(+) 7(+) 3(+) 2
FC12 Ave 7.3655E − 01 9.0965E − 02 8.1058E − 01 3.0284E − 01 1.0037E + 00 1.5828E − 01 9.2844E − 02
STD 2.8584E − 01 1.2252E − 03 2.7821E − 01 2.1796E + 00 1.2382E − 01 1.9304E − 03 2.9824E − 01
Rank(test) 5(+) 1(−) 6(−) 4(+) 7(−) 3(+) 2
FC13 Ave 6.8510E−01 4.0259E−01 4.1731E−01 5.5079E + 00 5.5632E−01 4.5388E−01 3.8903E−01
STD 2.0744E + 00 3.5520E−02 4.4655E−02 3.0711E−01 5.6633E−02 7.7562E−03 2.4412E−02
Rank(test) 6(+) 2(+) 3(≈) 7(+) 5(+) 4(+) 1
FC14 Ave 8.3855E + 00 2.3001E−01 5.1779E−01 7.5318E + 01 3.4235E−01 7.2281E−01 4.2998E−01
STD 4.2866E + 00 2.1930E−02 2.6524E−02 8.0755E + 00 2.5744E−02 5.1955E−02 3.7201E−02
Rank(test) 6(+) 1(≈) 4(−) 7(+) 2(≈) 5(+) 3
FC15 Ave 2.5625E + 02 1.2559E + 01 1.3177E + 01 1.0215E + 04 1.5902E + 01 1.7446E + 01 7.5225E + 00
STD 2.1086E + 02 1.9874E + 00 1.8683E + 00 3.2423E + 04 2.2552E + 00 1.4473E − 01 4.0864E + 00
Rank(test) 6(+) 2(+) 3(−) 7(+) 4(−) 5(+) 1
FC16 Ave 1.2023E + 01 1.4804E + 01 1.2314E + 01 1.3785E + 01 1.1005E + 01 1.0852E + 01 1.0630E + 01
STD 3.6985E − 01 2.4403E − 01 1.5985E − 01 5.3125E − 01 2.6522E − 01 1.9525E − 02 2.1370E − 02
Rank(test) 4(+) 7(+) 5(+) 6(+) 3(+) 2(≈) 1

Average rank 5.230769 3.615385 3.923077 5.384615 4.230769 3.846154 1.769231

Overall rank 6 2 4 7 5 3 1
Overall +/−/≈ 11/1/1 7/4/2 3/5/5 10/2/1 6/4/3 8/1/4 45/17/16

Bold values in these table indicates the “best result” achieved by a specific method (GWO, CS, PSO, etc) for a considered function F (F01, F02, etc).

Table 12
Statistical results for CEC2014 hybrid test cases.

No. Algorithms SOS GSA CS CMA-ES CoBiDE GWO LGWO

FC17 Ave 5.5865E + 06 7.2880E + 05 1.2439E + 05 5.4855E + 03 1.6535E + 03 5.3952E + 04 1.6412E + 03

STD 3.6851E + 06 1.2488E + 05 3.0053E + 03 3.6247E + 03 1.1285E + 02 2.0886E + 03 6.9852E + 02
Rank(test) 7(+) 6(+) 5(+) 3(+) 2(−) 4(+) 1
FC18 Ave 4.8625E + 05 3.8621E + 02 1.4215E + 03 1.5185E + 09 4.8155E + 01 1.1455E + 03 1.1397E + 03
STD 2.2476E + 05 1.1468E + 02 2.4209E + 01 3.9258E + 08 8.4600E + 00 3.8632E + 01 2.9023E + 01
Rank(test) 6(+) 2(+) 5(≈) 7(+) 1(−) 4(−) 3
FC19 Ave 4.0660E + 01 1.5678E + 02 1.1816E + 01 2.9845E + 02 2.0292E + 01 1.0789E + 01 9.8420E + 00
STD 2.2358E + 01 2.4896E + 01 5.3125E − 01 4.2523E + 01 9.8552E − 01 2.0721E − 03 1.9852E − 02
Rank(test) 5(+) 6(+) 3(+) 7(+) 4(≈) 2(−) 1
FC20 Ave 1.5949E + 04 8.2447E + 04 1.3593E + 02 4.6121E + 03 3.5379E + 01 8.2490E + 03 8.1683E + 01
STD 1.0025E + 04 1.3421E + 04 3.9858E + 01 3.8802E + 03 4.8922E + 00 5.6202E + 01 4.7058E + 01
Rank(test) 6(+) 7(+) 3(−) 4(+) 1(−) 5(≈) 2
FC21 Ave 7.8598E + 05 1.7879E + 05 1.6696E + 03 6.8602E + 03 7.4978E + 02 6.8250E + 05 1.5413E + 03
STD 6.0551E + 05 3.1904E + 04 1.8149E + 02 2.7562E + 03 1.5436E + 02 2.1136E + 04 2.0715E + 03
Rank(test) 7(+) 5(+) 3(−) 4(≈) 1(−) 6(+) 2
FC22 Ave 5.4507E + 02 9.5109E + 02 3.1138E + 02 1.6104E + 03 2.5742E + 02 3.5737E + 02 2.4171E + 02
STD 1.8229E + 02 1.8234E + 02 9.1532E + 01 2.9209E + 02 7.6962E + 01 2.8799E + 01 2.3741E + 01
Rank(test) 5(+) 6(+) 3(≈) 7(≈) 2(+) 4(−) 1

Average rank 6 5.333333 3.666667 5.333333 1.833333 4.166667 1.666667

Overall rank 7 5 3 5 2 4 1
Overall +/−/≈ 6/0/0 6/0/0 2/2/2 4/0/2 1/4/1 2/3/1 21/9/6

Bold values in these table indicates the “best result” achieved by a specific method (GWO, CS, PSO, etc) for a considered function F (F01, F02, etc).
130 A.A. Heidari, P. Pahlavani / Applied Soft Computing 60 (2017) 115–134

Table 13
Statistical results for CEC2014 composition test beds.

No. Algorithms SOS GSA CS CMA-ES CoBiDE GWO LGWO

FC23 Ave 3.4236E + 02 2.0000E + 02 3.4374E + 02 5.7912E + 02 3.1175E + 02 3.2348E + 02 2.0000E + 02

STD 2.1852E + 01 2.3411E − 5 8.1932E − 02 4.9411E + 01 4.7136E − 07 1.6914E − 01 2.8552E − 01
Rank(test) 5(+) 1(−) 6(−) 7(+) 3(−) 4(−) 1
FC24 Ave 2.3617E + 02 2.0008E + 02 2.2139E + 02 2.1203E + 02 2.1839E + 02 2.0000E + 02 2.0000E + 02
STD 9.8953E + 00 7.0555E − 02 1.4508E + 00 7.4908E + 00 1.6855E + 01 2.2863E − 04 2.1785E − 05
Rank(test) 7(+) 3(≈) 6(+) 4(≈) 5(+) 1(≈) 1
FC25 Ave 2.1495E + 02 2.0000E + 02 2.0904E + 02 2.1207E + 02 2.0068E + 02 2.0032E + 02 2.0000E + 02
STD 3.4960E + 00 4.9228E − 07 6.1156E − 01 2.9699E + 00 7.3998E − 03 4.8867E − 03 3.9810E − 03
Rank(test) 7(+) 1(−) 5(≈) 6(+) 4(≈) 3(+) 1
FC26 Ave 1.0093E + 02 1.6935E + 02 1.0087E + 02 1.2533E + 02 1.0209E + 02 1.0021E + 02 1.0007E + 02
STD 2.9009E − 02 2.9081E + 01 4.1891E − 02 5.5098E + 01 1.6960E − 01 3.1820E − 02 3.9998E − 02
Rank(test) 4(≈) 7(+) 3(−) 6(+) 5(≈) 2(−) 1
FC27 Ave 4.9605E + 02 7.6900E + 02 4.1820E + 02 1.0692E + 03 1.0054E + 03 5.4382E + 02 3.9852E + 02
STD 1.5103E + 02 5.6821E + 02 5.6852E + 00 2.3008E + 02 6.7082E + 01 1.9629E + 00 1.0029E + 00
Rank(test) 3(−) 5(+) 2(+) 7(+) 6(+) 4(≈) 1
FC28 Ave 1.3208E + 03 7.6532E + 02 9.1293E + 02 2.7948E + 03 3.5157E + 02 1.6008E + 03 2.0392E + 02
STD 1.0582E + 02 3.0818E + 02 3.9422E + 01 5.9168E + 02 8.1142E + 00 5.5922E − 01 1.8553E − 02
Rank(test) 5(+) 3(+) 4(+) 7(+) 2(+) 6(+) 1
FC29 Ave 2.1568E + 04 2.0005E + 02 1.6858E + 03 3.5228E + 04 2.5652E + 02 9.1764E + 03 2.4683E + 02
STD 1.1852E + 03 4.5785E − 02 2.2585E + 02 5.3369E + 03 8.1125E − 01 1.8147E + 01 2.1915E + 01
Rank(test) 6(+) 1(−) 4(≈) 7(+) 3(+) 5(+) 2
FC30 Ave 3.7319E + 04 2.3115E + 04 3.5887E + 03 6.4777E + 05 7.3153E + 02 3.1357E + 04 3.0228E + 04
STD 2.1242E + 04 2.4398E + 04 6.5226E + 02 1.3141E + 05 9.8485E + 01 6.2146E + 02 5.1873E + 02
Rank(test) 6(+) 3(+) 2(≈) 7(+) 1(−) 5(≈) 4

Average rank 5.375 3 4 6.375 3.625 3.75 1.5

Overall rank 6 2 5 7 3 4 1
Overall +/−/≈ 6/1/1 4/3/1 3/2/3 7/0/1 4/2/2 3/2/3 27/10/11

Bold values in these table indicates the “best result” achieved by a specific method (GWO, CS, PSO, etc) for a considered function F (F01, F02, etc).

precise solutions. These features can be either due to the adaptive
searching behaviors in GWO or enhanced LF-based random walks
in LGWO.
The overall statistical results of evaluated algorithms for FC17-
FC22 hybrid test beds are reported in Table 12. These hybrid
benchmarks are more complex than the two earlier categories;
hence, evaluated optimizers can hardly determine the global opti-
mal of these problems.
From Table 12, it is seen that LGWO still provides the best-
obtained results in FC17, FC19, and FC22. Meanwhile, LGWO was
achieved to the first rank in treating hybrid benchmarks. In addi-
tion, the superiority of LGWO is statistically significant in most of
the cases. The efficacy of LGWO is satisfactory compared to the SOS,
GSA, and CMA-ES. Note that the LGWO still inherits the foremost
features and advantages of the basic GWO. It can be perceived that
LGWO can realize competitive solutions with a promising perfor-
mance on complicated tasks. From Table 12, it can be perceived that
LGWO can be more fruitful than GWO in dealing with the hybrid
functions such as FC17, FC20, FC21 and FC22. An implication of
these findings is that a suitable balance between explorative and
exploitative modes of the hunting phases has occurred in LGWO.
The proposed algorithmic modifications enhanced the searching
capacities of GWO. It is seen that the CoBiDE outperforms other
optimizers on FC18, FC20, and FC21 and it is ranked as the second
best technique.
Table 13 reflects the results of different optimizers for compo-
sition functions.
From Table 13, it can be realized that the efficiency of the LGWO
is acceptable compared to the SOS, CMA-ES, CS and GWO based on
the average and STD values in dealing with FC23, FC24, FC25, FC26,
FC27, FC28 test functions. In addition, it was recognized that GSA
can outperform other techniques as the second best method, espe-
cially for FC23, FC25, and FC29. In comparison with GSA, LGWO
still performs meaningfully better on 4 cases (FC26, FC27, FC28,
and FC30) and similarly on FC24 function, which has different fea-
tures nearby LO. It is seen that the GWO algorithm, which is the
fourth best method, can perform better than GSA only on FC24,
FC26, and FC27 multimodal problems, while the results of LGWO
are better than the basic GWO in all of the eight composition cases.
With regard to CoBiDE, LGWO can significantly perform better than

Table 14
Details of CEC2011 test cases. Complete description of these tasks can be obtained from [78] (D: Dimension, C: Constraints, B: Bound constrained, IE: Inequality, LE: Linear
Equality).

No. ID Problem C D

1 T01 Parameter estimation for frequency-modulated (FM) sound waves B 6

2 T05 Tersoff potential function minimization (instance 1) B 30
3 T06 Tersoff potential function minimization (instance 2). B 30
4 T07 Spread spectrum radar polyphase code design B 20
5 T09 Large scale transmission pricing LE 126
6 T10 Circular antenna array design B 12
7 T11.1 Dynamic economic dispatch (instance 1) IE 120
8 T11.2 Dynamic economic dispatch (instance 2) IE 216
9 T11.7 Static economic load dispatch (instance 5) IE 140
10 T11.8 Hydrothermal scheduling (instance 1) IE 96
11 T11.9 Hydrothermal scheduling (instance 1) IE 96
12 T11.10 Hydrothermal scheduling (instance 1) IE 96
13 T.12 Spacecraft trajectory optimization (Messenger) B 26
14 T.13 Spacecraft trajectory optimization (Cassini2) B 22
 A.A. Heidari, P. Pahlavani / Applied Soft Computing 60 (2017) 115–134 131

Table 15
Results of LGWO in comparison with basic algorithms (D: Dimension, S: Significant).

Algorithm D metric GA PSO DE ES GWO LGWO

Problem S S S S S
T01 6 Ave 9.18E − 05 − 9.23E − 12 − 4.36E − 07 − 7.02E − 02 + 1.96E + 00 + 1.86E + 00
STD 5.34E − 06 2.81E − 15 3.21E − 08 3.18E − 03 2.85E − 02 1.67E − 03
Rank 3 1 2 4 6 5
T05 30 Ave −1.38E + 01 − −1.15E + 01 + −6.60E + 00 + −3.86E + 00 + −3.52E + 01 + −3.56E + 01
STD 2.76E + 00 3.21E + 00 1.79E + 00 1.97E + 00 1.24E + 00 2.34E − 01
Rank 3 4 5 6 2 1
T06 30 Ave −1.63E + 01 + −5.62E + 00 + −2.56E + 01 + −1.13E + 01 + −1.17E + 01 + −2.74E + 01
STD 7.98E − 01 2.84E − 01 3.41E − 01 3.80E − 01 3.96E + 00 2.57E + 00
Rank 3 6 2 5 4 1
T07 20 Ave 9.45E − 01 + 9.82E − 01 + 9.24E − 01 + 9.23E − 01 + 1.12E + 00 + 8.89E − 01
STD 2.41E−04 5.32E−03 2.51E−02 6.98E−03 8.58E − 02 3.71E − 01
Rank 4 5 3 2 6 1
T09 126 Ave 1.59E + 03 + 3.52E + 01 + 4.58E + 03 + 1.89E + 03 + 2.09E + 04 + 1.98E + 03
STD 5.84E + 00 1.91E + 00 9.68E + 02 8.10E + 00 1.87E + 01 9.59E + 02
Rank 2 1 5 3 6 4
T10 12 Ave −1.18E + 01 + −1.88E + 01 + −1.85E + 01 + −4.27E + 00 + −1.82E + 01 + −2.15E + 01
STD 6.78E + 00 4.21E + 00 6.73E + 00 1.21E + 00 6.27E + 00 1.02E − 02
Rank 5 2 3 6 4 1
T11.1 120 Ave 5.78E + 05 + 2.36E + 05 + 5.74E + 04 + 8.56E + 05 + 1.24E + 05 + 5.81E + 04
STD 1.64E + 03 4.42E + 03 3.64E + 03 4.73E + 03 2.56E + 03 8.15E + 02
Rank 5 4 1 6 3 2
T11.2 216 Ave 6.24E + 06 + 2.68E + 06 + 2.79E + 06 + 8.65E + 06 + 1.86E + 06 + 1.07E + 06
STD 5.57E + 05 3.14E + 05 1.32E + 05 3.19E + 05 7.61E + 04 4.09E + 03
Rank 5 3 4 6 2 1
T11.7 140 Ave 4.85E + 06 + 3.24E + 06 + 1.94E + 06 + 7.45E + 06 + 2.11E + 06 + 1.92E + 06
STD 7.64E + 04 5.79E + 04 8.02E + 05 3.40E + 04 2.78E + 05 3.68E + 04
Rank 5 4 2 6 3 1
T11.8 96 Ave 1.88E + 06 + 6.37E + 06 + 1.23E + 06 + 3.59E + 06 + 1.02E + 06 + 9.46E + 05
STD 6.35E + 04 4.41E + 05 6.68E + 04 5.81E + 04 3.12E + 04 4.20E + 03
Rank 4 6 3 5 2 1
T11.9 96 Ave 3.50E + 06 + 9.82E + 05 + 1.58E + 06 − 7.14E + 06 + 1.29E + 06 + 1.02E + 06
STD 4.01E + 05 1.55E + 04 7.65E + 04 7.63E + 04 1.91E + 05 1.00E + 05
Rank 5 1 4 6 3 2
T11.10 96 Ave 2.38E + 06 + 8.49E + 06 + 1.75E + 06 + 1.12E + 06 + 1.02E + 06 + 9.49E + 05
STD 3.36E + 04 2.54E + 04 5.50E + 04 1.81E + 04 5.47E + 04 6.03E + 03
Rank 5 6 4 3 2 1
T.12 26 Ave 1.59E + 01 + 7.24E + 01 + 1.29E + 01 + 6.89E + 01 + 1.62E + 01 + 1.20E + 01
STD 7.49E − 01 2.84E + 00 2.75E − 01 7.21E − 01 2.83E + 00 1.90E + 00
Rank 3 6 2 5 4 1
T.13 22 Ave 9.10E + 00 + 4.18E + 01 − 1.82E + 01 + 9.49E + 00 + 1.76E + 01 + 1.18E + 01
STD 3.21E − 02 3.73E + 00 8.25E − 01 4.83E − 02 8.41E + 00 2.84E + 00
Rank 1 6 5 2 4 3

Sum of the ranks 53 55 45 65 51 25

Average rank 3.785714 3.928571 3.214286 4.642857 3.642857 1.785714
Overall rank 4 5 2 6 3 1
Overall +/−/≈ 12/2/0 12/2/0 12/2/0 14/0/0 14/0/0 64/6/0

Bold values in these table indicates the “best result” achieved by a specific method (GWO, CS, PSO, etc) for a considered function F (F01, F02, etc).

other methods (FC24, FC27, FC28, and FC29) on four cases and per-
form at a similar level on two asymmetrical functions (FC25 and
FC26).
Additionally, it observed that a number of performance dif-
ferences between the LGWO and its peers aren’t statistically
significant, whereas these optimizers haven’t similar average val-
ues. For example, the performance difference between LGWO and
CoBiDE is insignificant in asymmetrical function FC26. This situ-
ation occurs when an optimizer such as CoBiDE runs based on a
certain number of self-sufficient runs, there is a slight possibility for
it to be jammed into LO and in this manner, the algorithm returns a
larger fitness cost. This large cost tends to threaten the total average
cost of CoBiDE.
Regarding overall results on Table 13, the LGWO can demon-
strate a satisfactory performance compared to other competitors.
However, regarding the theorem of “no free lunch”, an optimizer
cannot outperform all previous MA on all aspects or on every type
of problem [72]. The proposed LGWO can’t be an exception as well.
The main reason behind the effectiveness of LGWO is that the
LF-based jumps can effectively redistribute the search agents to
enhance their diversity and to emphasize on more explorative steps
in case of immature convergence to LO. The new hunting operations
have improved the quality of solutions and searching capacities of
GWO. Composition problems are suitable to measure the LO escap-
ing capabilities of different optimizers. According to the results,
the LGWO has an improved LO escaping capacity compared to the
basic GWO. As in the first experiment, the results affirm that the
embedded LF-based searching patterns can relatively alleviate the
stagnation problems of the GWO. In summary, the results of LGWO
are promising or at least competitive with other optimizers accord-
ing to the optimality of solutions. In the case of LO stagnation,
the LF-based motions and GS strategy can successfully stimulate
the exploration and exploitation tendencies of LGWO to become
active again. The features of LGWO is that it can prevent wolves
from falling into LO, optimize with more efficacy, and improve the
wolves’ searching (hunting) capabilities in challenging cases.
4.3. Experiment 3: results and analysis on real-world problems
In the present section, the efficacy of LGWO is evaluated using
14 real-world problems from IEEE CEC2011. It’s worth noting that
these investigations are conducted according to the guidelines of
132 A.A. Heidari, P. Pahlavani / Applied Soft Computing 60 (2017) 115–134

Table 16
The obtained results of LGWO with 1.5 × 105 NFE.

Problem Best Median Mean Worst STD

T01 0.00000E + 00 1.22000E + 00 1.86000E + 00 1.11875E + 01 1.67000E − 03

T05 −3.68450E + 01 −3.62350E + 01 −3.56000E + 01 −2.99652E + 01 2.34000E − 01
T06 −2.92000E + 01 −2.86000E + 01 −2.74000E + 01 −2.23875E + 01 2.57000E + 00
T07 5.00000E − 01 6.23006E − 01 8.88955E − 01 1.05585E + 00 3.71000E − 01
T09 4.57000E + 02 9.86240E + 02 1.98000E + 03 2.15845E + 03 9.59000E + 02
T10 −2.17520E + 01 −2.15912E + 01 −2.15000E + 01 −1.85123E + 01 1.02000E − 02
T11.1 5.10000E + 04 5.45120E + 04 5.81280E + 04 6.15135E + 04 8.15000E + 02
T11.2 1.06000E + 06 1.06808E + 06 1.07342E + 06 1.08276E + 06 4.08927E + 03
T11.7 1.92372E + 06 1.92397E + 06 1.92407E + 06 2.06410E + 06 3.68112E + 04
T11.8 9.41381E + 05 9.43219E + 05 9.46331E + 05 9.49024E + 05 4.20179E + 03
T11.9 9.28199E + 05 9.67102E + 05 1.02354E + 06 1.02637E + 06 9.99832E + 04
T11.10 9.45203E + 05 9.48178E + 05 9.49277E + 05 9.51308E + 05 6.02851E + 03
T.12 7.62831E + 00 1.01782E + 01 1.19811E + 01 1.50488E + 01 1.89952E + 00
T.13 8.62711E + 00 9.19733E + 00 1.18372E + 01 1.71474E + 01 2.83750E + 00

CEC2011 [78,79]. For details about these problems, the reader can
refer to [78]. Table 14 reviews the main details of the used CEC2011
functions.
The performance of LGWO is compared to the standard GWO,
GA, PSO, DE, and ES as the well-established optimizers in literature.
For GA, real coding, roulette wheel selection, single point crossover
with a probability of 1 and mutation probability of 0.001 is used.
For DE, F and CR are 0.5. For PSO, w is 0.8, 1 is 1.0, and 2 is 1.0.
For ES,  and
are set to 50, and mutation ı is equal to 1. These
parameters are also recommended and set by Simon in [80]. Based
on CEC2011, the population size of GA, PSO, DE, and ES is set to 50.
In addition, all results are attained over 25 independent runs. The
maximum NFE is limited to 1.5 × 105 for each case.
The obtained results are tabulated in Table 15. Note that the best
results are bolded. The overall results of Wilcoxon test and ranking
results are also embedded in Table 15.
Based on Table 15, it is seen that the conventional GA can per-
form as the best method on spacecraft trajectory optimization
problem (T.13), the simple PSO represents the best performance in
three cases (T01, T09, T11.9), and the ES strategy returns the best
results on none of the problems. The proposed LGWO performs
well on the majority of test cases (T.05-T.07, T.10-T11.2, T11.7,
T11.8, T11.10, T.12), while the basic GWO and DE cannot show
a competitive performance. Note that the results of Wilcoxon’s
test affirm that the behaviour of LGWO is significantly different
from GWO, DE, PSO, GA and ES on 91% of the comparisons. In
PSO, the moving particles reveal stagnation behaviors and resem-
ble themselves in some steps (loss of diversity). Hence, the basic
PSO cannot recover its power and efficiency in solving some prob-
lems, occasionally. From the other side, it is seen that the proposed
LGWO can demonstrate a satisfactory performance in realizing
these real-world tasks. However, some of the results of GWO in
this experiment are not desirable. In comparison with GA, PSO, DE,
GWO and ES algorithms, the LGWO’s statistical results and the rank-
ing results indicate that it can be considered as the best technique
in this test. The basic GWO is also the second best method in dealing
the test cases considered here.
The performance of LGWO in terms of the best, median, mean,
worst and STD of the results can be seen in Table 16. From Table 16,
it can be concluded that the proposed LGWO can attain satisfactory
results in dealing with real-world problems.
It was observed from the last experiment that the LGWO can
perform better than GWO as a result of its LF-based exploration
strategies. Therefore, as it can be seen from the results on T11.2,
T11.7, and T11.8 problems, the possibility of stagnation to LO is
considerably mitigated in LGWO. Based on |A| and random jumps
of LF, the LGWO has an enhanced tendency for global search and it
can often put emphasis on more extensive exploration of the search
space. The LGWO also can lay emphasis on further exploitation in
the last steps.
5. Conclusions and future works
In this article, a modified GWO with LF-based operators was pro-
posed to alleviate the stagnation problems of the basic optimizer.
For the first test, the LGWO and GWO, PSO, CS, FA, DE, BA, and GSA
were compared based on the quality of solutions for realizing 29
test cases. The results verify that LGWO can obtain very competi-
tive also better results compared to GWO. Based on ranking records,
LGWO can find better-quality or competitive solutions and it out-
performs as the best amongst GWO, PSO, DE, GSA, FA, BA, and CS
optimizers. Convergence trends of LGWO are better than equiva-
lent curves for GWO and PSO. In addition, non-parametric statistical
tests affirm that the optimality of solutions is significantly enriched.
From the first experiment, it can be concluded that LGWO not only
shows an efficient performance, but also the stagnation behaviors
of GWO are alleviated, considerably.
For the second test, 30 benchmarks from CEC2014 were
employed to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed LGWO.
The results show that LGWO outperforms GWO and several well-
known optimizers due to the effects of the GS strategy and LF-based
patterns on exploration and exploitation. Moreover, LGWO was
compared with the GA, PSO, and ES optimizers on 14 practi-
cal engineering problems. The LGWO was capable of performing
particularly well on several real-world engineering problems. It
outperformed the conventional GWO, DE, PSO, GA, and ES. From
the results, we can conclude that the proposed LGWO is a simple,
efficient optimizer that can be utilized as a powerful approach in
dealing with both classic and real-world applications.
For future works, it is possible to design discrete extension of
LGWO. The future research may consist of employing the LGWO
to tackle specific industrial tasks. Also, the efficiency of LGWO will
be compared with other GWO-based optimizers for solving vari-
ous problems. To end with, we hope that this work will motivate
other researchers who are working on new MA and optimization
concepts.
Acknowledgment
We would like to gratefully acknowledge the constructive com-
ments and suggestions of the anonymous referees.
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