A New Approach for Task Scheduling Using Elite Particle Swarm Optimization

This paper presents a modified approach for task assignment problem or multiprocessor scheduling using Elite Particle Swarm Optimization. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is a population based heuristic optimization technique. The concept of elitism is combined with the Particle Swarm Optimization which yields promising result when compared to Normal PSO. Elitism is the process of preserving the best solutions for computation to achieve near optimal solutions. The strategy of replacing the worst string of the new population with the best string of the current population is adopted in this method. Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithms with this strategy are referred as Elite Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm or EPSO. Elitism can rapidly increase the performance of PSO, because it prevents losing the best found solution to date.Elitism is also combined with mutation to prevent the algorithm being stuck at local optima. The result show that the Particle Swarm Optimization with elitism and mutation performs better than the normal Particle Swarm Optimization with dynamically varying inertia method.