While a fully coherent all-sky search is known to be optimal for detecting signals from compact binary coalescences (CBCs), its high computational cost has limited current searches to less sensitive coincidence-based schemes. For a network of first-generation GW detectors, it has been demonstrated that particle swarm optimization (PSO) can reduce the computational cost of this search, in terms of the number of likelihood evaluations, by a factor of $\approx 10$ compared to a grid-based optimizer. Here, we extend the PSO-based search to a network of second-generation detectors and present further substantial improvements in its performance by adopting the local-best variant of PSO and an effective strategy for tuning its configuration parameters. It is shown that a PSO-based search is viable over the entire binary mass range relevant to second-generation detectors at realistic signal strengths.

• Received 13 June 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.98.044029