New Adaptive Echolocation Radar Technique Incorporated into the Bat Algorithm Applied to Benchmark Functions (Radar-Bat)

Abstract

This article proposes a bat algorithm that incorporates novel techniques inspired by maritime radars, referred to as the Radar-Bat algorithm. This proposed method allows each virtual bat to identify the position of the best solution at a given distance within the search space. It incorporates an adaptive threshold to maintain a constant false alarm rate (CFAR), enabling the acceptance of solutions based on the best value found, thus improving the exploitation of the search space. Furthermore, a systematic directional sweep balances exploration and exploitation effectively. This algorithm is used to solve complex optimization problems, essentially those with multimodal functions, demonstrating that the proposed algorithm achieves better convergence and robustness compared to the basic bat algorithm, highlighting its potential as a novel contribution to the field of metaheuristics. To evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm against the basic bat algorithm, the Wilcoxon and Friedman non-parametric tests are applied, with a significance level of 5\%. Computational experiments show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithm. In terms of quality, the proposed algorithm shows clear superiority over the basic bat algorithm across most benchmark functions. Regarding efficiency, although Radar Bat incorporates additional mechanisms, the experimental results do not indicate a consistent disadvantage in execution time, with both algorithms exhibiting comparable performance depending on the problem and dimensionality.