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Constrained Multiobjective Optimization Algorithm
Based on Immune System Model
Shuqu Qian, Yongqiang Ye, Senior Member, IEEE, Bin Jiang, Senior Member, IEEE, and Jianhong Wang
AbstractAn immune optimization algorithm, based on the
model of biological immune system, is proposed to solve mul-
tiobjective optimization problems with multimodal nonlinear
constraints. First, the initial population is divided into feasible
nondominated population and infeasible/dominated population.
The feasible nondominated individuals focus on exploring the
nondominated front through clone and hypermutation based on a
proposed affinity design approach, while the infeasible/dominated
individuals are exploited and improved via the simulated binary
crossover and polynomial mutation operations. And then, to
accelerate the convergence of the proposed algorithm, a transfor-
mation technique is applied to the combined population of the
above two offspring populations. Finally, a crowded-comparison
strategy is used to create the next generation population. In
numerical experiments, a series of benchmark constrained mul-
tiobjective optimization problems are considered to evaluate the
performance of the proposed algorithm and it is also compared
to several state-of-art algorithms in terms of the inverted genera-
tional distance and hypervolume indicators. The results indicate
that the new method achieves competitive performance and even
statistically significant better results than previous algorithms do
on most of the benchmark suite.
Index TermsImmune algorithm (IA), multiobjective opti-
mization, nonlinear constraint, transformation mechanism.
I. I NTRODUCTION
ANY real-world constrained optimization problems,
M such as portfolio problems [1], knapsack problems [2],
power system dispatch [3], and so forth, involve the simulta-
neous optimization of several intrinsically conflicting objec-
tives. Mathematically, these types of problems are defined as
constrained multiobjective optimization problems (CMOPs).
Traditional mathematical approaches have some difficulties
when directly applied to solve CMOPs, and can only obtain a
single Pareto-optimal solution in a single run. Moreover, it will
be more difficult to solve CMOPs with nonlinear constraints.
Manuscript received November 7, 2014; revised March 8, 2015 and
May 24, 2015; accepted July 22, 2015. This work was supported in part
by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61304146
and Grant 61473145, in part by the Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Internet
of Things and Control Technologies (Nanjing University of Aeronautics
and Astronautics), and in part by the Provincial Science and Technology
Foundation of Guizhou of China under Grant 20152002. This paper was
recommended by Associate Editor S. Mostaghim. (Corresponding author:
Yongqiang Ye.)
S. Qian is with the College of Automatic Engineering, Nanjing University of
Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China, and also with Anshun
University, Anshun 561000, China (e-mail: shuquqian@163.com).
Y. Ye, B. Jiang, and J. Wang are with the College of Automatic Engineering,
Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China
(e-mail: melvinye@nuaa.edu.cn; binjiang@nuaa.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCYB.2015.2461651
2168-2267 c 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1
Various bio-inspired optimization algorithms, such as evo-
lutionary algorithm (EA) [4], [5], immune algorithm (IA) [6],
differential evolution algorithm (DE) [7], [8], artificial bee
colony algorithm [9], particle swarm algorithm (PSO) [10],
and other hybrid heuristic algorithms [11], [12], have been
very successful in solving a wide variety of unconstrained
multiobjective optimization problems (UMOPs) during the
last twenty years. However, when these algorithms are used
to solve CMOPs, a suitable constraint handling technol-
ogy (CHT) is required to incorporate into the affinity/fitness
functions for dealing with equality or inequality constraints.
A large number of CHTs have been developed to solve
constrained single-objective optimization problems (CSOPs)
in recent years [13][16]. But very few works have stud-
ied the design of algorithms for solving CMOPs [17].
Some researchers have applied existing CHTs that are
used for CSOPs to EAs for solving CMOPs. For instance,
Ray et al. [18] proposed the use of nondominated sorting for
feasible and infeasible solutions. Singh et al. [19] presented
the use of nondominated checking combined with a special
operator to favor constraints satisfaction in simulated anneal-
ing algorithm. Qu and Suganthan [20] reported the usage of
an ensemble of three CHTs to solve a set of well-known
CMOPs. However, unlike CSOPs, algorithms for CMOPs not
only need to deal with various limits on decision variables but
also need an appropriate evaluation approach for objective vec-
tors. Therefore, one of the major issues for solving CMOPs is
how to utilize the infeasible individuals and exploit the useful
information they provide during the search process.
In recent years, multiobjective EAs (MOEAs) and CHTs
have received a lot of attention. Some approaches extend
the ability of the well-known MOEA/D [21] to deal with
CMOPs. Asafuddoula et al. [22] developed an adaptive CHT
with a dynamical violation threshold. The CHT is embed-
ded within the framework of MOEA/D to form a novel
constrained MOEA (cMOEAD). Simulation results are com-
pared with those obtained by nondominated sorting genetic
algorithm-II (NSGAII) on ten CMOPs and a real-world toy
submarine design problem. Jan and Khanum [23] modified
MOEA/D with DE to form CMOEA/D-DE, then two variants
(CMOEA/D-DE-SR, CMOEA/D-DE-CDP) of CMOEA/D-DE
are proposed based on stochastic ranking (SR) [24] and the
constraint-domination principle (CDP) [25], respectively. In
CMOEA/D-DE-SR, the modified SR is adopted as the update
scheme of CMOEA/D-DE, while CDP is adopted to evalu-
ate the offspring in CMOEA/D-DE-CDP. The two algorithms
are tested on constrained test problem (CTP) and constrained
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2 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CYBERNETICS
function (CF) instances. Experimental results show that
CMOEA/D-DE-CDP works better than CMOEA/D-DE-SR.
But the algorithm is tested only using two variables in CTP
problems. Therefore, there remains a need to validate the supe-
riority of the proposed algorithm when it is applied to high-
dimensional CMOPs. In addition, Martinez and Coello [26]
developed a cMOEADs-based MOEA/D-DE with a novel -
constraint selection mechanism. This approach was validated
using several CMOPs. Moreover, Liu et al. [27] proposed a
dynamic multiobjective evolutionary algorithm with domain
decomposition (DMOEADD) based on the idea of decompo-
sition. In DMOEADD, the feasible domain in decision space is
divided into several subdomains. Each subdomain exchanges
information through genetic operators. Thirteen UMOPs and
ten CMOPs, which were proposed in congress on evolu-
tionary computation (CEC) 2009, are tested by DMOEADD.
Simulation results indicate that DMOEADD could success-
fully solve most problems.
More recently, modified constrained multiobjective evolu-
tionary algorithm (MCMOEA) [28], based on a modified
objective function method which was initially introduced by
Woldesenbet et al. [29] and a feasible-guiding strategy, is pro-
posed to handle CMOPs. In MCMOEA, objective functions
and constraint violation values are combined together by a
feasibility ratio to modify objective functions, which enables
infeasible individuals with better objective function values and
low constraint violation values to take part in the evolution
process. Furthermore, a DE/infeasible-to-feasible strategy is
developed to guide infeasible individuals to move toward the
feasible region in terms of a determinate feasible direction.
Although simulation results indicate that MCMOEA can find
a well-spread Pareto-optimal front (POF), the proposed CHT
is only suited for those individuals in the neighborhood where
they share similar feasible directions. This technique may be
ineffective for discontinuous search spaces.
However, many other topics within this area remain almost
unexplored on CMOAs, such as diversity mechanisms specially
designed for constrained search spaces. As is well known, artifi-
cial immune systems (AIS) are parallel and distributed systems
inspired by the biological immune system (IS) [30]. Any high
affinity clone developed by somatic hypermutation is expected
to be preferentially expanded, while a few low affinity cells
are allowed to enter the repertoire, maintaining the population
diversity. Moreover, AIS is capable of maintaining a memory
of past information and adaptively learning about new encoun-
ters. These properties have motivated researchers to develop
powerful optimization algorithms that have solved complex
engineering problems [31], [32]. In particular, Xiao and Zu [33]
proposed a new constrained multiobjective IA (MOAIS+SR)
by integrating SR with an unconstrained MOAIS [34]. Two
scenarios of SR are proposed to replace the nondominated
sorting procedure and to determine the winner of two indi-
viduals. MOAIS+SR is validated on CTP instances with five
decision variables. Experimental results show that MOAIS+SR
achieves the best overall performance among the algorithms
(the other two are MOAIS+CD and NSGAII+CD). However,
the development of IA has received relatively little attention
for solving CMOPs.
In this paper, we propose a novel constrained multiobjective
immune genetic optimization algorithm (denoted by CMIGA)
based on an AIS model to solve CMOPs. We systematically
consider the design of affinity, convergence performance, and
population diversity. The initial population is divided into two
distinct subpopulations: 1) feasible nondominated population
and 2) infeasible/dominated population. Clone and hypermu-
tation operators are applied to the first population and then
generate an offspring population. Simulated binary crossover
and polynomial mutation are performed on some excellent anti-
bodies from the second population to generate another offspring
population. A transformation operator, used for escaping from
an inferior local optimum, is applied to the two offspring pop-
ulations. Finally, a crowded-comparison strategy is applied to
create the next generation population. In numerical experiments,
we present the proposed algorithms performance in solving
18 CMOPs. Simulation results have verified the effectiveness
and promise of the proposed algorithm.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. We
first briefly review the main CHTs in Section II. And then,
we give a brief description of the CMOP formulation as well
as the definition of several related concepts in Section III.
In Section IV, the biological functions of IS are described
and an algorithm model with a transformation operator is pro-
posed. Then in Section V, we develop a novel constrained
multiobjective optimization algorithm based on the IS model
and introduce the main operators of the proposed algorithm.
Section VI discusses the experimental setup, including bench-
mark CMOPs and performance measures. Finally, Section VII
presents the simulation results and discussion, and the last
section draws the conclusion.
II. C ONSTRAINT H ANDLING A PPROACHES
In this section, some relevant contributions to the solution
of CMOPs, which are CHTs representative of the state-of-art
in the area, are briefly discussed. A detailed discussion can be
found in [35].
The most simple CHT is to use penalty function (PF)
approaches. When PF only depends on the degree of viola-
tion of the inequality, the PF is called a static penalty. In
contrast, if PF depends on the current generation count, the
PF is called a dynamic penalty. When PF methods are used to
deal with CMOPs, the constraint violation for each constraint
is evaluated as well, and the sum of violations is added to
each objective function with multiplication of a penalty factor.
Although their implementation is quite simple, PF approach
still requires a careful fine-tuning of their penalty factors in
order to determine the severity of the penalties to be applied,
and these values are highly problem-dependent. To improve
the flexibility of the PF approach, Woldesenbet et al. [29]
proposed a method based on adaptive PFs and distance mea-
sures of an individual for CMOPs. The objective functions are
used in the nondominated sorting so that the algorithm evolves
feasible optimal solutions not only from the feasible space but
also from the infeasible space. The number of feasible indi-
viduals in the population is used to guide the search process to
find more feasible or optimal solutions. Other PF approaches
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QIAN et al.: CONSTRAINED MULTIOBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM BASED ON IS MODEL
are presented in [36][38]. However, the main shortcoming of
the adaptive PF method lies in their design, because adaptive
penalty factors are adapted based on the current behavior of the
algorithm, and it is unknown whether the adaptive changes will
be really useful in later cycles of the optimization process [35].
The most popular CHT is originally proposed by
Deb et al. [25]. They simply modify the definition of dom-
ination of UMOPs between two solutions, and propose the
following CHT, which is defined as the CDP.
A solution x is said to dominate another solution y in
CMOPs, if any of the following conditions is true.
1) Solution x is feasible and solution y is not.
2) Solutions x and y are both infeasible, but solution x has
a smaller overall constraint violation.
3) Solutions x and y are feasible and solution x dominates
solution y.
In [25], three algorithms, NSGAII with CDP, Jimenezs
algorithm, and Ray et al.s algorithm [18], are compared
on test problems CTP1CTP7 with five decision variables.
Simulation results show that NSGAII with CDP outperformed
the other two MOEAs. Recently, several cMOEADs, based on
CDP, have been also proposed. In [39], CDP is directly applied
to a proposed jumping gene multiobjective genetic algorithm,
and in [40], a PI-NSGA-II-VF algorithm with modified CDP is
proposed to solve two to five objective optimization problems.
Zhang and Qian [31] developed a constrained MOAIS+SR
with CDP for CMOPs in dynamic environments. However,
CDP favors feasible solutions over infeasible ones. Therefore,
the main drawback of this constraint handling method is that
it may lose some potential information about the infeasible
region.
In addition, SR CHT is originally proposed by
Runarsson and Yao [24]. To achieve a balance between
objectives and PFs stochastically, SR is designed to deal with
the inherent shortcomings of the PF method. In SR, instead
of the definition of penalty factors, an user-defined parameter
called pf controls the criterion used for the comparison of
infeasible solutions. Runarsson and Yao [24] improved a SR
strategy by adding a differential mutation similar to that used
in DE. Zhang et al. [41] suggested a novel search biases
selection strategy with SR, and applied it to evolutionary
strategy algorithms. In [42], a hybrid algorithm integrating
PSO with SR is presented for solving standard constrained
numerical optimization and engineering problems. These
methods perform better with large populations and more
generations, but they may be impractical in solving real-world
problems. As mentioned in Section I, CMOEA/D-DE-SR [23]
and MOAIS+SR [33] both use a SR strategy.
III. P ROBLEM D ESCRIPTION
Without loss of generality, CMOP can be formulated as
follows:
min F(x) = ( f1 (x), f2 (x), . . . , fm (x))
s.t gj (x) 0 j = 1, 2, . . . , p
gj (x) = 0 j = p + 1, p + 2, . . . , p + q
x = (x1 , x2 , . . . , xn )
li xi ui i = 1, 2, . . . , n
3
where x  Rn is decision vector that includes n variables.
p is the number of inequality constraints, while q is the num-
ber of equality constraints. li and ui denote lower and upper
bounds on xi , respectively.  comprises the set of all solutions
which satisfy all constraints and is called the feasible region.
fi (x)(i = 1, 2, . . . , m) is the ith objective function. gj (x) refers
to a constraint function. The objectives and constraints can
be linear or nonlinear. Generally, the equality constraints are
usually transformed into inequality constraints.
Definition 1 (Pareto Dominance): For two decision vectors
x, y , x dominates y (x y) if and only if fi (x) fi (y) for
all i {1, 2, . . . , m}, and fj (x) < fj (y) for at least one index
j {1, 2, . . . , m}
Definition 2 (Pareto Optimality): A decision vector x 
is said to be Pareto-optimal if there does not exist another vec-
tor x  such that x x . The entirety of all Pareto-optimal
solutions is called the Pareto-optimal set; the corresponding
objective vectors form the POF.
Definition 3 (Nondominated Sets and Fronts): Let X .
The function p(X) gives the set of nondominated decision
vectors in X
p(X) = {x X|x is nondominated regarding X}. (2)
The set p(X) is the nondominated set regarding X, the corre-
sponding set of objective vectors F(p(X)) is the nondominated
front regarding X. Furthermore, if X = , then the set p()
is PS and the set F(p()) is POF.
IV. I MMUNE S YSTEM P RINCIPLE
In this section, we concentrate on some aspects of the
IS, which are relevant to this paper. IS is a complex of
cells, molecules, and organs that represent an identification
mechanism capable of perceiving and combating dysfunction
from our own cells and the action of exogenous infectious
microorganisms [43]. The interaction among the IS and sev-
eral other systems and organs allows the regulation of the
body, guaranteeing the stable functioning of the body [44].
The innate IS and the adaptive IS are two inter-related sys-
tems, which can identify a foreign molecule [i.e., antigen (Ag)]
from a bacterium or other invaders.
In the innate IS, specialized Ag presenting cells (APCs),
such as macrophages, roam the body, ingest, and digest the
Ags that they find and then fragment these Ags into gene
segments which are later attached to major histocompatibility
complex (MHC) molecules and manifested on the surface of
MHC as peptide-MHC combinations [45]. However, T-cells in
IS have receptor molecules that enable each of them to recog-
nize a different peptide-MHC combination. T-cells, activated
by that recognition, divide and secrete lymphocytes or chem-
ical signals. Then, these signals mobilize other components
of the IS, and meanwhile, promote the start of the adaptive
immune response.
The adaptive IS uses somatically generated Ag receptors
that are clonally distributed on the two types of lympho-
cytes: 1) B-cells and 2) T-cells. The B-cells, which also have
(1) receptor molecules of a single specificity on their surface,
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4 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CYBERNETICS
(a)
Fig. 1. (a) IS model. (b) Algorithm model: the APC-module, T-module, B-module, and M-module correspond to gene segment pool, infeasible/dominated
population, feasible nondominated population, and memory pool, respectively.
respond to those signals. Unlike the receptors of T-cells, how-
ever, those of B-cells can recognize parts of Ags freely in
solution, without MHC molecules. Each B-cell produces a
specific antibody (Ab), which can recognize and bind to an
Ag. Affinity measures the ability of an Ab to bind an Ag, the
higher the affinity is, the more easily the Ag is neutralized.
In order to neutralize diverse Ags, the activated B-cells divide
and differentiate into a large number of identical B-cells. This
process is called affinity maturation. Maturated B-cells turn
into plasma cells that secrete Ab proteins to fight off the Ags,
which are soluble forms of their receptors. Some T-cells and
B-cells become memory cells that persist in the circulation and
boost the IS readiness to eliminate the same Ag if it presents
itself in the future.
Through the recognition and distinction of specific molec-
ular patterns, the Abs play a central role in the IS. The basic
unit of an Ab, or immunoglobulin, is composed of two iden-
tical light chains and two identical heavy chains [43]. It is
found that an immunoglobulin polypeptide chain is encoded
in multiple gene segments scattered along a chromosome of
the germ-line genome. These gene segments must be brought
together to form a complete immunoglobulin gene active
in B lymphocytes. On one hand, recombination is a rearrange-
ment process that forms the gene fragments from the segments
libraries in an orderly manner to generate a new functional
Ab molecule, implemented by a biologically inspired mech-
anism called transformation [46]. Biological transformation
consists of the transfer of small pieces of extra cellular DNA
between organisms. These strains of DNA, or gene segments,
are extracted from the environment and added to recipient
cells. On the other hand, mutations are introduced somati-
cally into an immunoglobulin gene with a high probability
(somatic hypermutation). Both recombination and mutation
greatly increase the diversity of the genetic information carried
in the germ-line genome.
The above immune principles motivate us to construct a
novel IS model [Fig. 1(a)]. Such a framework consists of four
vital modules: 1) APC-module; 2) T-module; 3) B-module; and
4) M-module. We draw an analogy between the IS model and
(b)
an algorithm model [Fig. 1(b)], and then develop the CMIGA,
which will be described in Section V-A.
In the APC-module, foreign Ags are ingested and digested
to gene segments by specialized APCs. These gene segments
form a gene segment library. Corresponding to CMIGA, a gene
segment pool which includes nseg gene segments of length lseg
is created. In the T-module, these gene segments are attached
to MHC protein to be MHC molecules. The MHC molecule
that presents on the surface of APCs is recognized by T-cells.
Then the T-cells that identify MHC molecules are activated
and divide lymphokines, or secrete chemical signals. The pro-
cess is a simulated evolution operation in CMIGA. In the
B-module, however, B-cells that respond to the chemical sig-
nal are activated. These activated B-cells are then cloned and
mutated. After that, some higher affinity variants are selected
to enter the pool of memory cells (M-module). The process is
a simulated immune operation. Finally, the recombined Abs
are implemented by a transformation operation. The transfor-
mation mechanism, which not only improves the infeasible
individuals moving toward the feasible region but also benefits
the searching within the boundary between feasible and infea-
sible regions, offers the ability to escape from local optima on
an affinity landscape, and facilitates intercommunion between
the two populations.
V. A LGORITHM F ORMULATION AND
M ODULE I LLUSTRATION
A. Algorithm Description
In this section, we propose a computational implementa-
tion of CMIGA. As associated with the problem model (1)
in Section III, Ag is viewed as CMOP. B-cell is regarded as
real-encoded feasible nondominated candidate solution. T-cell
is assimilated to infeasible/dominated solution.
The pseudo-code of CMIGA is given in Algorithm 1,
where t represents the iteration counter, notation (X t , n) indi-
cates the tth generation population X t with size n. T() is
defined as immune or genetic operator, and the subindex
within bracket indicates the operation (e.g., T(D) refers to
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QIAN et al.: CONSTRAINED MULTIOBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM BASED ON IS MODEL 5

Algorithm 1 Pseudo-Code of CMIGA

Input: N, Tmax , nseg , nfea , nc .
Output: P - Nondominated set.
1: Initialization: Set initial generation t = 1. Generate initial population X t = (x1 , x2 , . . . , xN ) and gene segment pool Y t = (y1 , y2 , . . . , ynseg ). Create
memory pool M t = .
2: Evaluation: For each antibody xi X t , calculate objective vector F(xi ) = ( f1 (xi ), f2 (xi ), . . . , fm (xi )) as well as constraint violation value V(xi ) =

p+q
max{gj (xi ), 0} (i = 1, 2, . . . , N).
j=1
3: while t Tmax do 
4: Population division: (At , nfea ) (Bt , N nfea ) = T(D) (X t , N). Antibody population X t is divided into feasible nondominated population At , and the
rest of antibodies construct population Bt .
5: Affinity assignment: For each antibody xi At , determine the scalar affinity value Aff (xi ) according to Eq.(3).
6: Clone reproduction: (Ct , N) = T(C) (Rt , nc ). Perform clone reproduction operation in terms of subsection V-B2.
7: Hypermutation: (Dt , N) = T(M) (Ct , N). Each clone of population Ct is submitted to mutate (see subsection V-B3), generating a population Dt of
matured clones, and calculate objective vector of mutated antibodies.
8: Update memory pool: (M t , nc ) = T(Um ) (At , nfea ).
9: Tournament selection: (Et , N2 ) = T(S) (X t Rt , N nc ). Apply binary tournament selection strategy to choose N2 antibodies from population (X t Rt )
forming a new population Et .
10: Evolution: (F t , N2 ) = T(E) (Et , N2 ). SBX crossover and polynomial mutation are performed on Et , and obtain population F t .
Transformation: (H t , 3N (T) t 3N t t  F t by invoking Algorithm 3, and calculate objective
11: 2 ) = T (U , 2 ). Implement transformation operation on U =D
vector and violation value of each antibody.
Crowded-Comparison selection: (Qt , N) = T(Cs ) (St , 3N t t  M t is formed, and carry out Crowded-Comparison
12: 2 + nc ). A combined population S = H
selection operation on St to obtain next generation population Qt (see subsection V-B7).
13: Update gene segment pool: (Y t , nseg ) = T(Us ) (Y t , nseg ). Update gene segment pool by invoking Algorithm 2.
14: X t+1 Qt , Y t+1 Y t , and t t + 1, go to line 3.
15: end while
16: All nondominated solutions in At form final nondominated set P.

division operation). An introduction to CMIGA can be seen determining the affinity of each Ab implies the computation
as follows. of the following.
1) Lines 1 and 2: First, N antibodies are generated randomly 1) Rate-Dominated: The rate-dominated of Ab x is
in decision space to form initial population X 1 , and nseg defined as
gene segments of length lseg are also created randomly to |{y|y x, y X}|
constitute initial gene segment pool Y 1 . Then objective c(x) =
|X|
and constraint violation values are calculated for each Ab.
Note that in line 2 gj (xi ) = |gj (xi )|, if j > p. Otherwise, where | | denotes the cardinality of a set.
gj (xi ) = gj (xi ). Where is a tolerance value for equality 2) Density: The density of Ab is expressed as follows:
constraints (usually 0.0001 to 0.001).
2) Lines 6 and 7: The clone reproduction operator is min d(x, y)
yX
applied to Rt , giving rise to a temporary population Ct . (x) = .
max d(y, z)
A maturated Ab population Dt is generated via hyper- y,zX
mutation operator on Ct .
3) Lines 9 and 10: The population (X t Rt ) is used for Here d(x, y) refers to the Euclidean distance between
selection, crossover, and mutation to create a new pop- antibodies x and y.
ulation F t . It is important to note that we use a binary The affinity of Ab depends on c(x) and (x)
tournament selection operator but the selection criterion 1
is based on CDP (see Section II). The number of Abs Aff(x) = + (1 )(x). (3)
1.0 + c(x)
selected is N/2. 
4) Line 11: The combined population Dt F t is processed One is added to ensure that denominator value is greater
by the transformation operator as Algorithm 3, and a than one and that 1/(1.0 + c(x)) < 1. [0, 1] is a constant.
new offspring population H t is generated.  We set = 0.8 so as to prefer rate-dominated to density in
5) Line 12: Finally, a new combined population (H t M t ) simulation experiments.
is used for crowded-comparison selection to create the According to the design of Ab affinity, the other operators
next population Qt of size N. Since current population  are designed as follows.
members and memory cells are all included in H t M t , 2) Clone Reproduction (T(C) ): We first select nc higher
elitismis ensured. In addition, the number of antibodies affinity antibodies from At composing a template popula-
in H t M t is no more than 2N due to |M t | = nc N/2 tion Rt . The nc selected antibodies will be cloned indepen-
as shown in Section V-B4. dently and proportionally to their affinities, generating a clone
population Ct . Here
B. Operator Design 
1) Affinity Assignment: Let X be the current Ab population, nfen if nfen < N2
nc = N . (4)
and the affinity of Ab x X is defined as Aff(x). In this paper, 2 otherwise
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6 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CYBERNETICS

Algorithm 2 Update Gene Segment Pool Algorithm 3 Transformation

Input: At = (x1 , x2 , . . . , xnfea ) - feasible nondominated population Input: 
Output: Y t - updated gene segment pool V t = (Dt F t ) = (v1 , v2 , . . . , v 3N ) - combined population
2
1: i 1 Y t = (y1 , y2 , . . . , ynseg ) - gene segment pool
2: while i nseg do ptra - transformation rate
3: Select randomly an antibody xr At , and create a gene segment yr Output: H t - updated gene segment pool
of length lseg in xr . 1: Set i = 1, H t =
4: yi yr and i i + 1. 2: while i 3N
5: end while 2 do
3: Select randomly a gene segment yr Y t and a random number rand
[0, 1].
4: if rand < ptra then
5: Apply transformation mechanism (Fig.3) on vi and yr to generate
The maximum size of the clone population Ct is set to N. That 
vi .
 i )) of Ab xi R is calculated as
is, the clone number (c(x t
6: else 
7: vi = vi
Aff(xi )
c(xi ) = N nc   . (5) 8: end if  
H t = H t vi and i i + 1
j=1 Aff xj
9:
10: end while
It is worthwhile to note that nc is no more than N/2 according
to (4).
3) Hypermutation (T(M) ): Antibody x = (x1 x2 xn )
undergoes hypermutation with the mutation probability pm ,
   
and the mutated Ab x = (x1 x2 xn ) is created as follows:


xj N 0, 1 if < 0.5
xj =  t (6)
xj + N 0, 1
otherwise
t

where is uniformly distributed random number generated

in [0,1]. N(0, 1/t) refers to a random number with a uniform
distribution between 0 and 1/t. t is generation counter.
4) Update Memory Pool (T(UM ) ): In each generation, the
nc highest affinity antibodies in At are copied into M t . The
maximum number of memory cells in M t is no more than
N/2 according to (4).
5) Update Gene Segment Pool (T(Us ) ): All gene segments
are to be updated. First, we randomly select an Ab xr At ,
then randomly create a new gene segment yr of length lseg
from the selected xr . The old gene segment in Y t is replaced
by the new gene segment yr . This procedure will not stop until
all old gene segments are accommodated. The procedure can
be seen from Algorithm 2.
It should be emphasized that the update of the gene segment
pool differs from the one presented in enhanced transformation
genetic algorithm (ETGA) [46]. In order to make better use
of the past information, unlike ETGA where the gene pool is
updated by using the genetic information of the individuals of
the previous population, CMIGA uses the memory cells in M t
to update the gene segment pool.
(T)
 t (T ): For each Ab vi (i = 1, 2, . . . ,
6) Transformation
(3N)/2) in D t F , it will be transformed with a trans-
formation probability ptra . The procedure is described in
Algorithm 3.
The transformation mechanism is shown in Fig. 2. We ran-
domly select a gene segment yr from the gene segment pool
Y t , and a random point of transformation is produced in the
Ab vi V t . The gene segment, which is incorporated in the
genome of the Ab, replaces the genes after the transforma-
tion point. Notice that the chromosome is seen as a circle.
Proceeding in this way, the chromosome size is kept constant.
7) Crowded-Comparison Selection (T(Cs ) ): Two solutions
(i.e., x and
 y) are randomly select from the combined popula-
tion H t M t . And if they have different nondomination ranks,
Fig. 2. Transformation mechanism.
Fig. 3. Crowding-distance computation.
then the one with lower rank is chosen. However, if both solu-
tions belong to the same front, then we select the solution that
is located in a less crowded region. The crowding-distance
of solution x in its front is the inverse of the sum of the
Euclidean distance between it and the nearest neighbors along
each objective. Fig. 3 shows the crowding-distance computa-
tion approach of all solutions on a nondominated front in 2-D
objective space. For instance, the crowding-distance of x is the
inverse of the sum of d(x, y) and d(x, z). Here, d(x, y) is the
Euclidean distance between solution x and solution y. As can
be seen from Fig. 3, the point z is the least crowded solution
except the boundary solutions a and d.
C. Computational Complexity
In this section, the complexity of CMIGA is presented in an
iteration processing. Moreover, we only consider population
size N in time complexity. According to the framework of
CMIGA, it has the following main processing steps.
1) Clone Reproduction (Line 6): Sorting and selecting nc
higher affinity antibodies require O(N log N) and O(N)
computations, respectively. In addition, the time com-
plexity for cloning is O(N). Therefore, the overall time
complexity of line 6 is a1 = 2O(N) + O(N log N).
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QIAN et al.: CONSTRAINED MULTIOBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM BASED ON IS MODEL 7

TABLE I
2) Hypermutation (Line 7): Mutating the N clones demands PARAMETER S ETTINGS OF THE P ROPOSED A LGORITHM
a computational time of a2 = O(N).
3) Evolution (Step 10): The time complexity of crossover
and mutation is a3 = 2O(N/2).
4) Transformation (Line 11): The time complexity of trans-
formation operation is a4 = O((3N)/2).
5) Crowded-Comparison Selection (Line 12): The nondo-
minated sorting requires O(((3N)/2 + nc )2 ). Afterward,
crowding selection requires O(((3N)/2 + nc ) TABLE II
S ETTING OF THE HV R EFERENCE P OINT FOR
log((3N)/2 + nc )) computations. In the worst A LL THE T EST I NSTANCES
case, the computational time required in this step
is a5 = O((2N)2 ) + O(2N log(2N)), when nc = N/2.
The overall complexity of CMIGA is

a1 + a2 + a3 + a4 + a5 = 2O(N) + O(N log N)

   
N 3N
+ O(N) + 2O +O
2 2

3) The Parameters of the Operators: For the six algorithms
+ O (2N) + O(2N log(2N)).
2
(7)
According to the operational rules of the symbol O(),
the worst time complexity of CMIGA can be simplified
as O(N 2 ).
VI. E XPERIMENTAL S ETUP
In order to validate the optimization performance of CMIGA
in solving CMOPs, we compare CMIGA with six represen-
tative constrained multiobjective algorithms (cMOEAD [22],
DMOEADD [47], MOAIS+SR [33], NSGAII with CDP [25],
MCMOEA [28], and CMOEA/D-DE-CDP [23]) on 18 widely
used benchmark CMOPs with different difficulties. The
CMOPs include Osyczka function (OSY) [48], Srinivas func-
tion (SRN) [49], Tanaka function (TNK) [50], eight CTP
problems [51], and seven CF problems which were proposed
in the CEC 2009 test suite [52]. Among these problems,
SRN, TNK, and OSY include multiple constraints with a few
decision variables, while CTP and CF instances have one
or two nonlinear constraints with ten decision variables as
suggested [51], [52]. Besides, for CTP problems, a complex
multimodal Rastrigins function is selected as the g(x) function
being compared, we have identical parameter settings as
suggested in [22], [23], [25], [28], [33], and [47]. For
CMIGA, The parameter settings are listed in Table I.
B. Performance Measures
Many performance measures have been suggested
in [53][55]. In our experiments, the performance of the
algorithms is accessed by using the inverted generational
distance (IGD) and Hypervolume (HV). A detailed discussion
can be found in [53] and [56]. IGD measures the average
distance from the points in the true POF to their closest
solution in the obtained nondominated set, which could
measure both the convergence and the diversity of solutions.
A low IGD value indicates that the obtained set is close to the
true POF as well as having a good distribution. HV measures
the volume of the objective space enclosed by the obtained
solution set and a reference point. A large HV value indicates
a good dominance relation. In addition, a Mann-Whitney
rank-sum test [57] is implemented to evaluate whether the
difference in performance between two independent samples
is significant among different nondominated sets obtained by
each algorithm.
For a fair comparison, 100 nondominated solutions selected
from final population are used to calculate the IGD and HV
n 

values as in [58] for each algorithm. In order to calculate IGD
g(x) = 1 + 10(n 1) + xi2 10cos(4 xi ) . (8) values, 300 uniformly distributed points are produced on the
i=2 true POF for each instance. Note that when the Pareto-optimal
solutions are composed of some disjoint points or regions (i.e.,
A. Algorithm Parameter Settings CTP2, CTP3, CF1, et al.), the 300 points will be selected on
the line of the Pareto points or regions. When computing HV
The parameter settings of all algorithms are as follows:
values, we select a point slightly larger than the worst value
1) Stopping Criterion: The maximal number of generations
of each objective on the true POF of each instance as the ref-
Tmax = 500 for all algorithms.
erence point, as is shown in Table II. Moreover, the solutions
2) Population Size: N = 200 for cMOEAD, DMOEADD,
that do not dominate the reference point are discarded in the
and CMOEA/D-DE-CDP, while N = 100 for CMIGA,
calculation of HV.
MCMOEA, and NSGAII. For MOAIS+SR, we set the
size of the Ab population Na = 40, and the other param-
eters are the same as in [33]. Note that these settings VII. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS AND A NALYSIS
lead to equal numbers of function evaluations for the In this section, we present the experimental results obtained
seven algorithms. by seven algorithms on 18 test instances. Each algorithm
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8 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CYBERNETICS

TABLE III
C OMPARISON OF M EAN AND SD OF IGD BASED ON 30 I NDEPENDENT RUNS FOR 18 T EST I NSTANCES .
T HE R ESULTS IN B OLDFACE I NDICATE THE B EST P ERFORMANCE

is implemented in the VC++ platform. The codes
of NSGAII with CDP and DMOEADD are avail-
able at http://www.iitk.ac.in/kangal/deb.shtml and http://
dces.essex.ac.uk/staff/qzhang/moeacompetition09.htm. For
each problem, all algorithms were executed independently
30 times. The results [mean and standard deviation (SD)] in
Tables III and IV are the averages of IGD and HV over those
30 runs. The numbers of decision variables and constraints
of test instances are indicated in the parentheses next to the
instances. The numbers inside the parentheses next to the
mean refer to the rank of the algorithms in that test instance.
For each algorithm, the overall rankings based on the ranking
of each problem are listed at the bottom of Tables III and IV.
Figs. 5 and 7 depict the mean of IGD and HV obtained by
each algorithm in 30 runs for each instance. The horizontal
axis represents test instances, while the vertical axis refers to
the averages of IGD or HV. To show the divergence of the
nondominated solutions obtained by all algorithms, the final
nondominated fronts are plotted in Fig. 4 on some harder
problems (i.e., CTP4, and CTP6.) in 30 runs. Due to the
space limitations, the nondominated fronts of CF3, CTP7,
and CTP8 are presented in the supplemental file (available at
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org).
The OSY, SRN, and TNK problems are low-dimensional
test instances, but they include multiple constraints. For OSY,
it has four linear inequality constraints and two nonlinear
second order inequality constraints. The true POF is a con-
catenation of five regions [51]. From Table III, it is easy to
see that CMIGA has the best (i.e., lowest) mean of IGD,
followed by cMOEAD. The ranking order of other algo-
rithms is NSGAII, DMOEADD, MOAIS+SR, MCMOEA,
and CMOEA/D-DE-CDP. Moreover, the small SD obtained
by CMIGA indicates that the optimization performance of
CMIGA is consistent over 30 runs. SRN has one linear
inequality constraint and one nonlinear second order inequality
constraint. Observing Table III, we can also see that cMOEAD
has the best IGD performance, followed by CMIGA. TNK
has one second order nonlinear inequality constraint and one
highly nonlinear trigonometric inequality constraint. The POF
lies on a nonlinear constraint surface. The ranking order of
each algorithm is similar to that for SRN except MCMOEA
and CMOEA/D-DE-CDP. Furthermore, since TNK is a two-
variable problem with the objective functions f1 = x1 and
f2 = x2 , it is easily solved by these algorithms except
MOAIS+SR and MCMOEA. The overall comparison of all
algorithms is shown in Fig. 5(a) for the three problems. As can
be observed, from Fig. 5(a), CMIGA achieves a better mean of
IGD for OSY. However, for SRN and TNK, cMOEAD obtains
a better performance, and CMIGA only obtains the second
best results. The possible reason for the failure of CMIGA
is that the number of decision variables of SRN and TNK
is less than the length of gene segment (see Table I), which
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QIAN et al.: CONSTRAINED MULTIOBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM BASED ON IS MODEL
TABLE IV
C OMPARISON OF M EAN AND SD OF HV BASED ON 30 I NDEPENDENT RUNS FOR 18 T EST I NSTANCES .
T HE R ESULTS IN B OLDFACE I NDICATE THE B EST P ERFORMANCE
causes the transformation operator to fail to exploit infeasible
regions.
The above problems have a few decision variables.
Moreover, most objective functions and constraints are not
adequately nonlinear. However, for the following CTP test
problems, the entire POFs are composed of some parts of
the unconstrained Pareto-optimal regions and some parts of
the constraint boundaries. They will cause difficulty in the
vicinity of the Pareto-optimal region and the entire search
space. Observing the experimental results in Table III, one
can see that CMIGA and cMOEAD achieve the best IGD
performance for different CTP problems. Moreover, a care-
ful analysis on the results obtained by cMOEAD and CMIGA
reveals that cMOEAD and CMIGA may be considered as com-
parable because of the small differences for all CTP instances
in the mean of IGD. On the other hand, the SDs obtained by
CMIGA are superior to those obtained by cMOEAD in most
problems. In particular, for CTP4, the singular feasible Pareto-
optimal solution is far away from the feasible region. An
algorithm has to travel through a long narrow feasible tunnel
in search of the solution at the end of the tunnel. From Fig. 4,
it is obvious that CTP4 causes difficulty in converging to the
true Pareto-optimal solutions for all algorithms in 30 runs.
The nondominated solutions found by each algorithm cannot
go close to the true Pareto-optimal solutions, but CMIGAs,
cMOEADs, and DMOEADDs ability to converge and find
9
diverse solutions are superior to other algorithms. In addition,
as to CTP6, which is also a hard problem, since the constraint
splits the search space into feasible and infeasible bands of
varying widths. Fig. 4 also presents the nondominated fronts
obtained by all algorithms in 30 runs. These figures clearly
show that CMIGA and cMOEAD consistently approximated
well the true POFs. However, other algorithms get trapped in
the local feasible region in some runs. The reason is the pres-
ence of hard constraints which makes the other algorithms
unable to overcome a number of infeasible holes before com-
ing to the island containing POF, while CMIGA and cMOEA
employ parallel and local search ability which maintains an
adequate diversity among solutions. Furthermore, the trans-
formation mechanism in CMIGA accelerates the speed of
infeasible individuals moving toward the feasible region and
offers the ability to escape from local optima. Fig. 5(b) shows
the overall comparison of all algorithms for CTP instances.
As can be seen from Fig. 5(b), the means of IGD obtained
by CMIGA are similar to those obtained by cMOEAD in
most CTP problems except CTP1, and NSGAII has the worst
performance.
As for the CF test problems, it can be observed from
Table III that CMIGA obtains the best mean of IGD for
CF2, CF4, CF5, and CF7. However, for CF1, CF3, and CF6,
DMOEADD obtains the best results, and CMIGA only gets
the second best performance. But the differences between
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10 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CYBERNETICS

Fig. 4. Plots of all the 30 final nondominated fronts obtained by each algorithm on CTP4 and CTP6. In each subplot, the horizontal and vertical axes
correspond to the first and second objective functions, respectively. F and IF represent the feasible and infeasible regions, respectively.

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 5. Comparison of the mean of IGD obtained by each algorithm in various test instances. In each subplot, the horizontal and vertical axes correspond
to test instances and the means of IGD, respectively. Test functions (a) OSY, SRN, and TNK, (b) CTP1CTP8, and (c) CF1CF7.

DMOEADD and CMIGA, in terms of the mean of IGD, are
extremely small for CF1, CF3, and CF6. Thus, it can be con-
cluded that the performance of both algorithms is similar in
terms of the measures of IGD. However, all algorithms per-
form comparatively poorly on problem CF3. Since the POF
of CF3 is concave and discontinuous, it could be more dif-
ficult than the other CF problems, all algorithms fail to find
the whole POF in each run on CF3. It can be observed from
Table III that CMIGA has the best (i.e., lowest) SDs for the
CF problems except CF3 and CF6.
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QIAN et al.: CONSTRAINED MULTIOBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM BASED ON IS MODEL 11

Fig. 6. Box plots of IGD value on all instances from seven algorithms in 30 independent runs. In each subplot, A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, and A7 represent
cMOEAD, DMOEADD, MOAIS+SR, NSGAII, MCMOEA, CMOEA/D-DE-CDP, and CMIGA, respectively.

The overall ranking in Table III shows that, as a whole,
CMIGA has the best rank, followed by DMOEADD. Although
cMOEAD performs much better than DMOEADD on the
OSY, SRN, TNK, and CTP problems, it only ranks third. This
is because cMOEAD has a lower rank on the CF problems.
Besides, CMOEA/D-DE-CDP presents worse performance.
Note that CMOEA/D-DE-CDP has shown a better perfor-
mance on the CTP problems in [23]. This may be due to the
2-D decision variables in those experiments. However, when
the decision variables are increased to ten in our experiments,
it causes difficulty to CMOEAD-DE-CDP in solving these
problems.
Fig. 6 presents the box plots of IGD for all instances
from cMOEAD (indicated by A1), DMOEADD (A2),
MOAIS+SR (A3), NSGAII (A4), MCMOEA (A5), CMOEA/
D-DE-CDP (A6), and CMIGA (A7) in 30 runs. In it, 18
cases are shown in order to highlight different observa-
tions, and we can observe that CMIGA has a superiority for
the IGD statistic, followed by cMOEAD and DMOEADD.
For instance, CMIGA shows lower IGD statistical results
on most of these problems. In particular, for OSY, CTP6,
CTP7, and CTP8, other algorithms indicate worse statistical
characteristics in Fig. 6(a1) and 6(a9)(a11) in a sense.
In some of the instances shown in Fig. 6, it is hard to
determine whether CMIGA is significantly better than the
other algorithms since they show similar IGD statistical char-
acteristics. Therefore, the MannWhitney rank-sum test is
used to examine the distribution of the IGD values in 30
runs [29], [57]. The corresponding statistical results of the
comparing algorithms by the p-values with respect to the null
hypothesis (i.e., no difference) are given in Table III. The nota-
tion used in Table III shows that the distribution of IGD
values obtained by CMIGA is significantly different (namely,
p-value < 0.05) from those obtained by the corresponding
algorithm in 30 runs, while indicates that the distribution
of IGD values obtained by CMIGA is similar to those obtained
by the corresponding algorithm. As can be seen from Table III,
CMIGA has a significant advantage compared to the distribu-
tion in other algorithms on most problems (except cMOEAD
on TNK; DMOEADD on CTP1, CTP3, CTP4, CTP7, and
CF6; MOAIS+SR on CTP1; NSGAII on OSY, CTP1, CTP2,
and CTP7).
Table IV shows the HV statistics based on 30 independent
runs on 18 test instances. The results in boldface indicate the
best results. These statistics are based on feasible nondomi-
nated solutions that dominate the reference point in Table II
(i.e., the solutions that are worse than the reference point in at
least one objective will contribute zero to HV) for each prob-
lem. It can be seen from Table IV that CMIGA obtains the best
(i.e., largest) performance on OSY, while cMOEAD achieves
the best results on SRN and TNK. For the CTP problems,
CMIGA gives the best mean HV on CTP2, CTP3, and CTP4,
while cMOEAD slightly outperforms CMIGA on other CTP
problems (e.g., the differences in the mean of HV are 0.015,
0.01, 0.012, and 0.162 on CTP5, CTP6, CTP7, and CTP8,
respectively). As a result, for the CTP instances, the perfor-
mance obtained by CMIGA and cMOEAD may be considered
as comparable in terms of the statistics of HV. However, for
the CF instances, CMIGA and DMOEADD provide a better
HV performance, while cMOEAD shows worse results. Fig. 7
depicts the average of HV obtained by each algorithm on each
problem. Observing Fig. 7(a) and (b), one can see that CMIGA
and cMOEAD have similar performance on SRN, TNK, and
CTP instances, while CMIGA and DMOEADD show similar
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12 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CYBERNETICS

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 7. Comparison of the mean of HV obtained by each algorithm in various test instances. In each subplot, the horizontal and vertical axes correspond to
test instances and the averages of HV, respectively. Test functions (a) OSY, SRN, and TNK, (b) CTP1CTP8, and (c) CF1CF7.

Fig. 8. Box plots of HV value on all instances from seven algorithms in 30 independent runs. In each subplot, A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, and A7 represent
cMOEAD, DMOEADD, MOAIS+SR, NSGAII, MCMOEA, CMOEA/D-DE-CDP, and CMIGA, respectively.

performance on the CF instances. Fig. 8 presents the box
plots of HV obtained by each algorithm on each problem over
30 runs. These figures illustrate that CMIGA and cMOEAD
achieve similar statistical characteristics (A7 and A1 in the
figures) on the CTP test instances, while other algorithms
display worse results. However, CMIGA and DMOEADD
can obtain comparable characteristics for the CF problems,
while other algorithms show inferior results. The overall rank-
ing order is CMIGA, cMOEAD, DMOEADD, MOAIS+SR,
MCMOEA, NSGAII, and CMOEA/D-DE-CDP in Table IV,
which is consistent with the results in Table III. Moreover, the
MannWhitney rank-sum test, in terms of the distribution of
HV values in 30 runs, shows that CMIGA has a significant
advantage compared to the distribution obtained with other
algorithms on most problems.
In summary, based on the statistical results of the IGD
and HV indicators, CMIGA is capable of obtaining a well
extended POF and very close to the true POF on most
of the test instances. The overall ranking order is CMIGA,
cMOEAD, DMOEADD, MOAIS+SR, MCMOEA, NSGAII,
and CMOEA/D-DE-CDP in terms of the IGD indicator.
Moreover, the ranking of the HV indicator is consistent with
that of the IGD indicator. The success of CMIGA can be
attributed to the exploitation of the infeasible region and the
production of Ab diversity in different subpopulations. In addi-
tion, the transformation mechanism offers the ability to escape
from local optima in constraint boundaries.
VIII. C ONCLUSION
Constrained multiobjective optimization is an extremely
challenging research topic in the field of optimization, due to
multimodality and nonlinearity. This paper presents a multiob-
jective immune optimization algorithm for solving constrained
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
QIAN et al.: CONSTRAINED MULTIOBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM BASED ON IS MODEL
multiobjective optimization with multimodal nonlinear con-
straints. First, by making an analogy between the two pro-
cesses of the IS response and the constrained multiobjective
problem, B-cells are treated as candidate solutions of opti-
mization problems. And then these solutions are distinguished
as feasible nondominated and infeasible/dominated popula-
tions. Feasible solutions are improved through recombination
and hypermutation, while infeasible/dominated solutions are
evolved by simulating binary crossover and polynomial muta-
tion. Finally, the population from the combination of feasible
solutions and infeasible ones is enhanced through a new
transformation mechanism using a gene segment pool. The
computational experiments are composed of 18 test instances
and the results obtained show that the proposed approach is
competitive with other methods, and is also able to converge
to the feasible POF in most cases.
It is also important to emphasize that there is very little
specific work regarding the use of AIS for nonlinear CMOPs,
and in this context, this approach provides a viable alterna-
tive. Obviously, a lot of work remains to be done in order
to improve the quality of the Pareto-optimal solutions, such
as, diversity mechanisms specially designed for constrained
search regions and performance measures of constrained mul-
tiobjective problems. For further work, the proposed technique
will be improved and applied to other CMOPs and engineering
design fields.
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CYBERNETICS
Shuqu Qian received the B.S. degree in mathemat-
ics and applied mathematics from FuYan Normal
College, Anhui, China, in 2000, and the M.S.
degree in operational research and cybernetics
from the School of Guizhou University, Guizhou,
China, in 2007. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D.
degree in control theory and control engineer-
ing with the College of Automatic Engineering,
Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics,
Nanjing, China.
His current research interests includes immune
algorithm, evolutionary algorithm, dynamic optimization and its application
to power electronics, and mathematical modeling.
Yongqiang Ye (SM12) received the B.E. and M.S.
degrees from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China,
in 1994 and 1997, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree
from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore,
in 2004, all in electrical engineering.
He was a Faculty Member with the School of
Information, Zhejiang University of Finance and
Economics, Hangzhou, for over four years. He
had also been a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the
Department of Electrical Engineering, Lakehead
University, Thunder Bay, ON, Canada, Department
of Systems and Computer Engineering, Carleton University, Ottawa,
ON, Canada, and the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dalhousie
University, Halifax, NS, Canada, respectively. He was a Professor with
the College of Automation Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics
and Astronautics, Nanjing, China, since 2009. His current research interests
include pattern recognition, learning and repetitive control, and power elec-
tronics control. He has authored or coauthored over 30 journal papers.
Mr. Ye served as an Associate Editor for IEEE/ASME AIM 2010,
CIS-RAM 2011, CCDC 2014, and CCDC 2015.
Bin Jiang (SM06) was born in Jiangxi, China, in
1966. He received the Ph.D. degree in automatic
control from Northeastern University, Shenyang,
China, in 1995.
He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow, a Research
Fellow, an Invited Professor, and a Visiting
Professor in Singapore, France, USA, and Canada,
respectively. He is currently the Chair Professor
of Cheung Kong Scholar Program with the
Ministry of Education and the Dean of College
of Automation Engineering with the Nanjing
University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China. His current
research interests include fault diagnosis, and fault tolerant control and their
applications.
Mr. Jiang is the Chair of Control Systems Chapter in the IEEE
Nanjing Section. He currently serves as an Associate Editor or Editorial
Board Member for several journals such as the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON
C ONTROL S YSTEMS T ECHNOLOGY, the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON F UZZY
S YSTEMS, the International Journal of Control, Automation and Systems,
Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems, the International Journal of Applied
Mathematics and Computer Science, Mathematical Problem in Engineering,
Acta Automatica Sinica, the Journal of Astronautics. He is a member of
the International Federation of Accountants Technical Committee on Fault
Detection, Supervision, and Safety of Technical Processes.
Jianhong Wang received the B.S. degree in math-
ematics and applied mathematics from the Jiangsu
Normal University, Xuzhou, China, in 2000, and the
M.S. degree in operational research and cybernet-
ics from the Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai,
China, in 2007.
Since 2000, he had been a Faculty Member with
the School of Science, Nantong University, Nantong,
China. He is currently with the College of Automatic
Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and
Astronautics, Nanjing, China. His current research
interests include digital filter design and digital signal processing.