Function approximation using artificial neural networks

Function approximation, which finds the underlying relationship from a given finite input-output data is the fundamental problem in a vast majority of real world applications, such as prediction, pattern recognition, data mining and classification. Various methods have been developed to address this problem, where one of them is by using artificial neural networks. In this paper, the radial basis function network and the wavelet neural network are applied in estimating periodic, exponential and piecewise continuous functions. Different types of basis functions are used as the activation function in the hidden nodes of the radial basis function network and the wavelet neural network. The performance is compared by using the normalized square root mean square error function as the indicator of the accuracy of these neural network models.