Kernel width optimization for faulty RBF neural networks with multi-node open fault

Many researches have been devoted to select the kernel parameters, including the centers, kernel width and weights, for fault-free radial basis function (RBF) neural networks. However, most are concerned with the centers and weights identification, and fewer focus on the kernel width selection. Moreover, to our knowledge, almost no literature has proposed the effective and applied method to select the optimal kernel width for faulty RBF neural networks. As is known that the node faults inevitably take place in real applications, which results in a great many of faulty networks, it will take a lot of time to calculate the mean prediction error (MPE) for the traditional method, i.e., the test set method. Thus, the letter derives a formula to estimate the MPE of each candidate width value and then use it to select the optimal one with the lowest MPE value for faulty RBF neural networks with multi-node open fault. Simulation results show that the chosen optimal kernel width by our proposed MPE formula is very close to the actual one by the conventional method. Moreover, our proposed MPE formula outperforms other selection methods used for fault-free neural networks. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.