MINIMIZING MULTIMODAL FUNCTIONS OF CONTINUOUS VARIABLES WITH THE "SIMULATED ANNEALING" ALGORITHM

A new global optimization algorithm for functions of continuous variables is presented, derived from the 'Simulated Annealing' algorithm recently introduced in combinatorial optimization. The algorithm is essentially an iterative random search procedure with adaptive moves along the coordinate directions. It permits uphill moves under the control of a probabilistic criterion, thus tending to avoid the first local minima encountered. The algorithm has been tested against the Nelder and Mead simplex method and against a version of Adaptive Random Search. The new method proved to be more reliable than the others, being always able to find the optimum, or at least a point very close to it. It is quite costly in term of function evaluations, but its cost can be predicted in advance, depending only slighly on the starting point.