In this paper, we propose a deep learning framework based on randomized neural network. In particular, inspired by the principles of Random Vector Functional Link (RVFL) network, we present a deep RVFL network (dRVFL) with stacked layers. The parameters of the hidden layers of the dRVFL are randomly generated within a suitable range and kept fixed while the output weights are computed using the closed form solution as in a standard RVFL network. We also propose an ensemble deep network (edRVFL) that can be regarded as a marriage of ensemble learning with deep learning. Unlike traditional ensembling approaches that require training several models independently from scratch, edRVFL is obtained by training a single dRVFL network once. Both dRVFL and edRVFL frameworks are generic and can be used with any RVFL variant. To illustrate this, we integrate the deep learning networks with a recently proposed sparse-pretrained RVFL (SP-RVFL). Extensive experiments on benchmark datasets from diverse domains show the superior performance of our proposed deep RVFL networks.
@cite_12: Abstract With the direct input–output connections, a random vector functional link (RVFL) network is a simple and effective learning algorithm for single-hidden layer feedforward neural networks (SLFNs). RVFL is a universal approximator for continuous functions on compact sets with fast learning property. Owing to its simplicity and effectiveness, RVFL has attracted significant interest in numerous real-world applications. In reality, the performance of RVFL is often challenged by randomly assigned network parameters. In this paper, we propose a novel unsupervised network parameter learning method for RVFL, named sparse pre-trained random vector functional link (SP-RVFL for short) network. The proposed SP-RVFL uses a sparse autoencoder with l 1 -norm regularization to adaptively learn superior network parameters for specific learning tasks. By doing so, the learned network parameters in SP-RVFL are embedded with the valuable information of input data, which alleviate the randomly generated parameter issue and improve the algorithmic performance. Experiments and comparisons on 16 diverse benchmarks from different domains confirm the effectiveness of the proposed SP-RVFL. The corresponding results also demonstrate that RVFL outperforms extreme learning machine (ELM).
In a standard RVFL network, the hidden layer parameters ( @math and @math ) are randomly generated within a suitable range and kept fixed thereafter. Even though RVFL has demonstrated its efficacy in various domains, its performance is often challenged by randomly assigned hidden layer parameters. To alleviate this issue, the authors in @cite_12 proposed an unsupervised parameter learning based RVFL known as sparse pre-trained RVFL (SP-RVFL). In an SP-RVFL network, an autoencoder with @math regularization is employed to learn the hidden layer parameters. Specifically, the optimization problem for the autoencoder is given by: