This study proposes a dual-population algorithmic scheme for differential evolution and specific mutation strategy. The first population contains the newest individuals, and is continuously updated, whereas the other keeps the top individuals throughout the whole search process. The proposed mutation strategy combines information from both populations. The proposed L-NTADE algorithm (Linear population size reduction Newest and Top Adaptive Differential Evolution) follows the L-SHADE approach by utilizing its parameter adaptation scheme and linear population size reduction. The L-NTADE is tested on two benchmark sets, namely CEC 2017 and CEC 2022, and demonstrates highly competitive results compared to the state-of-the-art methods. The deeper analysis of the results shows that it displays different properties compared to known DE schemes. The simplicity of L-NTADE coupled with its high efficiency make it a promising approach.

Parameter adaptation is one of the key research fields in the area of evolutionary computation. In this study, the application of neuroevolution of augmented topologies to design efficient parameter adaptation techniques for differential evolution is considered. The artificial neural networks in this study are used for setting the scaling factor and crossover rate values based on the available information about the algorithm performance and previous successful values. The training is performed on a set of benchmark problems, and the testing and comparison is performed on several different benchmarks to evaluate the generalizing ability of the approach. The neuroevolution is enhanced with lexicase selection to handle the noisy fitness landscape of the benchmarking results. The experimental results show that it is possible to design efficient parameter adaptation techniques comparable to state-of-the-art methods, although such an automatic search for heuristics requires significant computational effort. The automatically designed solutions can be further analyzed to extract valuable knowledge about parameter adaptation.