A multi-strategy enhanced dung beetle algorithm for solving real-world engineering problems

The Dung Beetle optimization (DBO) algorithm is an innovative and effective metaheuristic algorithm widely recognised for its excellent numerical optimization performance. However, DBO converges slowly and tends to fall into local optima due to the imbalance between exploration and exploitation, the lack of collaborative search capability and population diversity. To overcome these challenges, this paper proposes a dung beetle optimization algorithm based on multi-strategy collaborative enhancement (MDBO). The algorithm constructs a “search-enhance-escape” collaborative optimization framework through adaptive regulation and elite information sharing, and contains three major innovations: (1) a dual adaptive search strategy, which combines the adaptive contraction mechanism of the leader’s centre of mass and the brownian bidirectional crossover perturbation strength regulation, to enhance the population diversity and collaborative search ability of the dung beetle, achieving a dynamic balance between exploration and exploitation; (2) Elite Enhanced Solution Quality (EESQ) mechanism, which improves the quality of both the current local and global optimal positions and accelerates convergence through structured elite information and dual-phase adaptive perturbation; and (3) Dynamic Oppositional Learning (DOL), which introduces an asymmetric adaptive perturbation in the dung beetle’s foraging and Breeding phases and enhances the ability to escape from local optima. The three act synergistically to achieve a more efficient optimised search. The performance of MDBO is evaluated using the IEEE CEC 2017, CEC 2019 and CEC 2020 benchmarking functions. Compared to the DBO algorithm, the MDBO algorithm improves the convergence accuracy and stability on the CEC2017 benchmark functions by 60.91 % and 63.98 %, respectively. For the CEC2019 benchmark functions, the corresponding improvements are 54.47 % and 41.36 %, while for the CEC2020 benchmark functions, they are 50.71 % and 55.16 %, respectively. In addition, its overall performance is evaluated against two complex real-world engineering problems: UAV path planning and wireless sensor network coverage optimization. The experimental results show that MDBO provides very competitive optimization results compared to DBO, two highly referenced algorithms and five advanced algorithms.