Fuzzy Adaptive Knowledge-Based Inference Neural Networks: Design and Analysis

A novel fuzzy adaptive knowledge-based inference neural network (FAKINN) is proposed in this study. Conventional fuzzy cluster-based neural networks (FCBNNs) suffer from the challenge of a direct extraction of fuzzy rules that can capture and represent the interclass heterogeneity and intraclass homogeneity when the data possess complex structures. Moreover, the capability of the cluster-based rule generator in FCBNNs may decrease with the increase of data dimensionality. These drawbacks impede the generation of desired fuzzy rules, and affect the inference results depending on the fuzzy rules, thereby limiting their generalization ability. To address these drawbacks, an adaptive knowledge generator (AKG), consisting of the observation paradigm (OP) and clustering strategy (CS), is effectively designed to improve the generalization ability in FAKINN. The OP distills the characteristic information (CI) from data to highlight the homogeneity and heterogeneity of objects, and the CS, viz., the weighted condition-driven fuzzy clustering method (WCFCM), is proposed to summarize the CI to construct fuzzy rules. Moreover, the feedback between the OP and CS can control the dimensionality of CI, which endows FAKINN with the potential to tackle high-dimensional data. The main originality of the study focuses on the AKG and WCFCM that are proposed to develop the structural design methodology of FNNs. The performance of FAKINN is evaluated on various benchmarks with 27 comparative methods, and two real-world problems are adopted to validate its effectiveness. Experimental results show that FAKINN outperforms the comparison methods.