Algorithm Configurations of MOEA/D with an Unbounded External Archive

Abstract: In the evolutionary multi-objective optimization (EMO) community, it is usually assumed that the final population is presented to the decision maker as the result of the execution of an EMO algorithm. Recently, an unbounded external archive was used to evaluate the performance of EMO algorithms in some studies where a pre-specified number of solutions are selected from all the examined non-dominated solutions. In this framework, which is referred to as the solution selection framework, the final population does not have to be a good solution set. Thus, the solution selection framework offers higher flexibility to the design of EMO algorithms than the final population framework. In this paper, we examine the design of MOEA/D under these two frameworks. First, we show that the performance of MOEA/D is improved by linearly changing the reference point specification during its execution through computational experiments with various combinations of initial and final specifications. Robust and high performance of the solution selection framework is observed. Then, we examine the use of a genetic algorithm-based offline hyper-heuristic method to find the best configuration of MOEA/D in each framework. Finally, we further discuss solution selection after the execution of an EMO algorithm in the solution selection framework.