Growing cascade correlation networks in two dimensions: A heuristic approach

Abstract

Dynamic neural network algorithms are used for automatic network design to avoid a time-consuming search for finding an appropriate network topology with trial-and-error methods. Cascade Correlation Network (CCN) is one of the constructive methods to build network architecture automatically. CCN faces problems such as large propagation delays and high fan-in. We present a Heuristic Pyramid-Tower (HPT) neural network designed to overcome the shortcomings of CCN. Benchmarking results for the three real-world problems are reported. The simulation results show that a smaller network depth and reduced fan-in can be achieved using HPT as compared with the original CCN.