Abstract
We have developed a new optimization algorithm termed simple bacteria cooperative optimization (sBCO) based on bacteria behavior patterns [1]. In [1], we have introduced the algorithm with basic operations and showed its feasibility with some function optimization problems. Since the sBCO was the first version with only basic operations, its performance was not so good. In this paper, we adopt a new operation, rank replacement, to the sBCO for improving its performance and compare its results to those of the simple genetic algorithm (sGA) which has been well known and widely used as an optimization algorithm. It was found from the experiments with four function optimization problems that the sBCO with rank replacement was superior to the sGA. This shows that our algorithm can be a good optimization algorithm.