Functional Link Neural Network - Artificial Bee Colony for Time Series Temperature Prediction

Higher Order Neural Networks (HONNs) have emerged as an important tool for time series prediction and have been successfully applied in many engineering and scientific problems. One of the models in HONNs is a Functional Link Neural Network (FLNN) known to be conveniently used for function approximation and can be extended for pattern recognition with faster convergence rate and lesser computational load compared to ordinary feedforward network like the Multilayer Perceptron (MLP). In training the FLNN, the mostly used algorithm is the Backpropagation ( BP) learning algorithm. However, one of the crucial problems with BP learning algorithm is that it can be easily gets trapped on local minima. This paper proposed an alternative learning scheme for the FLNN to be applied on temperature forecasting by using Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) optimization algorithm. The ABC adopted in this work is known to have good exploration and exploitation capabilities in searching optimal weight especially in numerical optimization problems. The result of the prediction made by FLNN-ABC is compared with the original FLNN architecture and toward the end we found that FLNN-ABC gives better result in predicting the next-day ahead prediction.