Non-dominated Sorting

Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II)

Karthik Sindhya, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher
Industrial Optimization Group
Department of Mathematical Information Technology
Karthik.sindhya@jyu.f
http://users.jyu.f/~kasindhy/

Objectives
The objectives of this lecture is to:
Understand the basic concept
and working of NSGA-II
Advantages and disadvantages

NSGA-II
Non-dominated sorting genetic
algorithm II was proposed by Deb et
al. in 2000.
NSGA-II procedure has three features:
It uses an elitist principle
It emphasizes non-dominated solutions.
It uses an explicit diversity preserving
mechanism

NSGA-II
NSGA-II
2

Crossove
r&
Mutation

NSGA-II
Crowded tournament selection operator
A solution xi wins a tournament with another
solution xj if any of the following conditions are true:
If solution xi has a better rank, that is, ri < rj .
If they have the same rank but solution x i has a better
crowding distance than solution xj, that is, ri = rj and di > dj
.
Objective
space

NSGA-II
Crowding distance
To get an estimate of the density of solutions
surrounding a particular solution.

Crowding distance assignment procedure

Step 1: Set l = |F|, F is a set of solutions in a
front. Set di = 0, i = 1,2,,l.
Step 2: For every objective function m =
1,2,,M, sort the set in worse order of f m or
fnd sorted indices vector: Im = sort(fm).

NSGA-II
Step 3: For m = 1,2,,M, assign a large
distance to boundary solutions, i.e. set
them to and for all other solutions j = 2
to (l-1), assign as follows:

i-1
i
i+
1

NSGA-II
Advantages:
Explicit diversity preservation mechanism
Overall complexity of NSGA-II is at most
O(MN2)
Elitism does not allow an already found
Pareto optimal solution to be deleted.

Disadvantage:
Crowded comparison can restrict the
convergence.
Non-dominated sorting on 2N size.