Multi-target Coverage with Connectivity Maintenance Using Improved Harmony Search Algorithm

This paper considers a multi-target coverage problem where agents aim to efficiently cover multiple targets while maintaining connectivity. An improved harmony search algorithm is proposed. In particular, the harmony generation part of the harmony search algorithm is designed to generate all the harmony memory and new harmony vectors, so that all decisions are made at the beginning to ensure connectivity. Moreover, we propose a new strategy to dynamically adjust pitch adjusting rate (PAR) and bandwidth (BW). In the initial stage of the algorithm, small PAR and large BW value not only increase the diversity of understanding vectors, but also improve the global search ability of the algorithm. In the later stage of algorithm optimization, we use large PAR and small BW value, so as to improve the local search ability of the algorithm and make the solution vector converge[2]. Numerical simulation is performed to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm. We find that the performance of the proposed algorithm in this paper is close to the traditional greedy algorithm which has no connectivity restrictions.