Multi-Strategy Hybrid Whale Optimization Algorithm Improvement

The whale optimization algorithm (WOA) is a swarm intelligence optimization algorithm developed by Mirjalili and Lewis in 2016 based on the foraging behavior of whales. Because of its simplicity and high efficiency, scholars have adopted this algorithm to address various problems in different disciplines. However, standard WOA has the problems of slow convergence speed, insufficient search accuracy, and limited ability to solve complex problems. In order to solve these problems, this paper proposes a multi-strategy hybrid whale algorithm (MHWOA). Firstly, the calculation speed is accelerated by modifying the parameters; then, the accuracy of the algorithm is improved by incorporating the scatter search strategy; finally, the simulated annealing algorithm is integrated to improve its ability to solve complex problems. The performance differences between MHWOA, the baseline algorithm, and the improved WOA algorithm are compared using the CEC2017 test suite and three real-world engineering problems. In the comparison of processing results of various problems, the calculation accuracy of MHWOA is improved by no less than 1.96%, the calculation error is reduced by no less than 1.83%, and the execution time is improved by no less than 5.6%. In the CNN-MHWOA-based time series electricity load forecasting problem, MHWOA shows the advantages of reduced error and improved fitting degree with the true value compared with the standard WOA.