This repository contains a C implementation of derivation of a Scatter Search algorithm developed by Mario Rodriguez-Fernandez et al. 2006. [1] The first implementation was in Matlab in a so called “eSS” package which is not supported anymore; in fact, the improved and parallelized Matlab version is now included in the package called AMIGO. The source code for improved eSS implementation is available in form of M-packages. The C version presented here is based on the latest changes to the algorithm in a publication by Jose a. Egea et al, 2010. [2]

Enhanced Scatter search is a meta heuristic population based algorithm with similarities to evolutionary strategies. The eSS is designed specifically for optimizing biological system and it achieved very good results. [1, 2]

General idea behind original Scatter Search algorithm is to start with relatively small population of Individuals and evolve from generation to generation by producing new offsprings using linear combination of Individuals in the population. The mentioned population set is called "Reference Set" in Scatter Search.

The pure scatter search algorithm describes below:

1. Start with a diverse set of solution in the search space called "diverseSet"
2. Select best solutions from diverseSet to form a "referenceSet"
3. repeat
   1. For all possible combination of solutions in the referenceSet generate one or more candidate by using linear combination of their parameters, "candidateSet".
   2. Check every generated solutions in the previous step with the worst solution in the referenceSet and replace the later with a new candidate. Repeat this process until no solution in candidateSet has better fitness or cost than the worst solution of the referenceSet.
   3. Perform refinement procedure on new solution added to the referenceSet.
   4. Continue this procedure until the maximum number of iteration reaches or the stop criteria satisfies.
4. Report the best solution in the referenceSet as a result and the referenceSet as the final population.

This is the basic structure of an scatter search algorithm which can be divided into 5 steps,

The local search algorithms (Nelder-Mead and Levenberg-Marquardt) are provided using the GNU Scientific Library (GSL). So, you need to install GSL in order to use local search algorithms. To install the gsl follows the procedure below for your OS:

OS X:

’brew install gsl’

Linux (Ubuntu):

’sudo apt-get install libgsl0-dev’

In order to make the program just run the

make clean; make

The _ess.o executable file will be generated after the compilation. To run the optimization just execute the file using ./_ess.o in the command line. In order to test different benchmark function, uncomment different #include statement in essProblem.c file. Note that the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm is only can be set for expo.h test problem.

In order to perform the optimization you need a objective function to compute the cost of each Individual during the optimization process. The functions eval_Ind and eval_Set are defined to call user defined objective function independent from the actual objective function definition. In each run, they call objectiveFunction; this function decides how to call the user defined objective function. Since the local search routines are implemented using gel library, you need to define special function pointer to pass to the gsl_ functions.

If you look at the code of one of the benchmark functions, you see that there are 3 similar functions are defined. I recommend you define your cost function inside the objfn and leave the nelder_objfn and levermed_objfn function untouched since as you see they are just translating an array to gsl_vector.

The last thing that you should do is to modify objectiveFunction in such a way that it sends a double array to objfn or other objective functions.

The inp and out are two void pointers parameters in some of the functions. The purpose of those is to pass your problem specific input or output parameters. In most cases, you only need to use them in objectiveFunction, objfn or evaluate_Ind. If we assume that you are going to call init_eSS and then run_eSS from your simulator or your project main() function. Then, what you might want to do to pass your model information between function is to send them using inp and out pointers and cast them when it is necessary.

In order to make your code portable and eSS updating process seamless, I recommend you to cast your inp parameters in objectiveFunction only for sending the right double[] to objfn. What happens is that the only file that depend on your simulator is essProblemdef.c which can be kept unchanged even if you wanted to update or change your eSS version.

[ ] Implement the local search candidate selection routine [ ] Test it on more sophosticated functions

1. Rodriguez-Fernandez, M., Egea, J. a, & Banga, J. R. (2006). Novel metaheuristic for parameter estimation in nonlinear dynamic biological systems. BMC Bioinformatics, 7, 483. doi:10.1186/1471-2105-7-483
2. Egea, J. a., Martí, R., & Banga, J. R. (2010). An evolutionary method for complex-process optimization. Computers & Operations Research, 37(2), 315–324. doi:10.1016/j.cor.2009.05.003