Designing beta basis function neural network for optimization using particle swarm optimization

Many methods for solving optimization problems, whether direct or indirect, rely upon gradient information and therefore may converge to a local optimum. Global optimization methods like evolutionary algorithms, overcome this problem. In this work it is investigated how to construct a quality BBF network for a specific application can be a time-consuming process as the system must select both a suitable set of inputs and a suitable BBF network structure. Evolutionary methodologies offer the potential to automate all or part of these steps. This study illustrates how a hybrid BBFN-PSO system can be constructed, and applies the system to a number of datasets. The utility of the resulting BBFNs on these optimization problems is assessed and the results from the BBFN-PSO hybrids are shown to be competitive against the best performance on these datasets using alternative optimization methodologies. The results show that within these classes of evolutionary methods, particle swarm optimization algorithms are very robust, effective and highly efficient in solving the studied class of optimization problems.