Radial Basis Function RBF Networks

Radial basis function networks (RBF) are a variant of three-layer feed forward networks (see Fig 44.18). They contain a pass-through input layer, a hidden layer and an output layer. A different approach for modelling the data is used. The transfer function in the hidden layer of RBF networks is called the kernel or basis function. For a detailed description the reader is referred to references [62,63]. Each node in the hidden unit contains thus such a kernel function. The main difference between the transfer function in MLF and the kernel function in RBF is that the latter (usually a Gaussian function) defines an ellipsoid in the input space. Whereas basically the MLF network divides the input space into regions via hyperplanes (see e.g. Figs. 44.12c and d), RBF networks divide the input space into hyperspheres by means of the kernel function with specified widths and centres. This can be compared with the density or potential methods in pattern recognition (see Section 33.2.5). 

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