A self-adaptive neural fuzzy network with group-based symbiotic evolution and its prediction applications

In this paper, we propose a self-adaptive neural fuzzy network with group-based symbiotic evolution (SANFN-GSE) method. A self-adaptive learning algorithm consists of two major components. First, a self-clustering algorithm (SCA) identifies a parsimonious internal structure. An internal structure is said to be parsimonious in the sense that the number of clusters (fuzzy rules) is equal to the true number of clusters in a given training data set. The proposed SCA is an online method and is a distance-based connectionist clustering method. Unlike the traditional cluster techniques that only consider the total variation to updates the only one mean and deviation. The proposed SCA method considers the variation of each dimension for the input data. Second, a group-based symbiotic evolution learning (GSE) method is used to adjust the parameters for the desired outputs. The GSE method is different from traditional GAs (genetic algorithms), with each chromosome in the GSE method representing a fuzzy system. Moreover, in the GSE method, there are several groups in the population. Each group represents a set of the chromosomes that belong to a cluster computing by the SCA. In this paper we used numerical time series examples (one-step-ahead prediction, Mackey-Glass chaotic time series, and sunspot number forecasting) to evaluate the proposed SANFN-GSE model. The performance of the SANFN-GSE model compares excellently with other existing models in our time series simulations.