Evolving neural networks: A comparison between differential evolution and particle swarm optimization

Abstract

Due to their efficiency and adaptability, bio-inspired algorithms have shown their usefulness in a wide range of different non-linear optimization problems. In this paper, we compare two ways of training an artificial neural network (ANN): Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Differential Evolution (DE) algorithms. The main contribution of this paper is to show which of these two algorithms provides the best accuracy during the learning phase of an ANN. First of all, we explain how the ANN training phase could be seen as an optimization problem. Then, we explain how PSO and DE could be applied to find the best synaptic weights of the ANN. Finally, we perform a comparison between PSO and DE approaches when used to train an ANN applied to different non-linear problems. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.