  Ocean wave energy is one of the latest renewable energy resources, projected
to be commercialized and competitive with other energy technologies in the near
future. However, wave energy technologies are not fully developed, so various
criteria must be optimized to enter the energy market. To optimize the
performance of wave energy converters (WECs) components, three challenges are
mostly considered: i)Power take-off systems settings (PTO), ii)Geometry
parameters of WECs, iii)WECs' layout. As each of them plays a significant role
in harnessing the maximum power output, this paper reviews applied optimization
techniques in WECs. Furthermore, due to the importance of fidelity and
computational cost in numerical methods, we discuss methods to analyze a WEC
together with the basics and developments of WECs interactions. Moreover, the
most popular optimization methods applied to optimize WEC parameters are
categorized, and their key characteristics are briefly discussed. As a result,
in terms of convergence rate, a combination of bio-inspired algorithms and
local search can outperform the competition in layout optimization. A review of
PTO coefficients and the geometry of WECs have emphasized the indispensability
of optimizing PTO coefficients and balancing design parameters with cost issues
even though it is costly on multi-modal and large-scale problems.

Applied Physics