FIR Digital Filter and Neural Network Design using Harmony Search Algorithm

Harmony Search (HS) is an emerging metaheuristic algorithm inspired by the improvisation process of jazz musicians. In the HS algorithm, each musician (= decision variable) plays (= generates) a note (= a value) for finding the best harmony (= global optimum) all together. This algorithm has been employed to cope with numerous tasks in the past decade. In this thesis, HS algorithm has been applied to design digital filters of orders 24 and 48 as well as the parameters of neural network problems. Both multiobjective and single objective optimization techniques were applied to design FIR digital filters. 2-dimensional digital filters can be used for image processing and neural networks can be used for medical image diagnosis. Digital filter design using Harmony Search Algorithm can achieve results close to Parks McClellan Algorithm which shows that the algorithm is capable of solving complex engineering problems. Harmony Search is able to optimize the parameter values of feedforward network problems and fuzzy inference neural networks. The performance of a designed neural network was tested by introducing various noise levels at the testing inputs and the output of the neural networks with noise was compared to that without noise. It was observed that, even if noise is being introduced to the testing input there was not much difference in the output. Design results were obtained within a reasonable amount of time using Harmony Search Algorithm

Digital Filter Design Using Improved Artificial Bee Colony Algorithms

Digital filters are often used in digital signal processing applications. The design objective of a digital filter is to find the optimal set of filter coefficients, which satisfies the desired specifications of magnitude and group delay responses. Evolutionary algorithms are population-based meta-heuristic algorithms inspired by the biological behaviors of species. Compared to gradient-based optimization algorithms such as steepest descent and Newton’s like methods, these bio-inspired algorithms have the advantages of not getting stuck at local optima and being independent of the starting point in the solution space. The limitations of evolutionary algorithms include the presence of control parameters, problem specific tuning procedure, premature convergence and slower convergence rate. The artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is a swarm-based search meta-heuristic algorithm inspired by the foraging behaviors of honey bee colonies, with the benefit of a relatively fewer control parameters. In its original form, the ABC algorithm has certain limitations such as low convergence rate, and insufficient balance between exploration and exploitation in the search equations. In this dissertation, an ABC-AMR algorithm is proposed by incorporating an adaptive modification rate (AMR) into the original ABC algorithm to increase convergence rate by adjusting the balance between exploration and exploitation in the search equations through an adaptive determination of the number of parameters to be updated in every iteration. A constrained ABC-AMR algorithm is also developed for solving constrained optimization problems.There are many real-world problems requiring simultaneous optimizations of more than one conflicting objectives. Multiobjective (MO) optimization produces a set of feasible solutions called the Pareto front instead of a single optimum solution. For multiobjective optimization, if a decision maker’s preferences can be incorporated during the optimization process, the search process can be confined to the region of interest instead of searching the entire region. In this dissertation, two algorithms are developed for such incorporation. The first one is a reference-point-based MOABC algorithm in which a decision maker’s preferences are included in the optimization process as the reference point. The second one is a physical-programming-based MOABC algorithm in which physical programming is used for setting the region of interest of a decision maker. In this dissertation, the four developed algorithms are applied to solve digital filter design problems. The ABC-AMR algorithm is used to design Types 3 and 4 linear phase FIR differentiators, and the results are compared to those obtained by the original ABC algorithm, three improved ABC algorithms, and the Parks-McClellan algorithm. The constrained ABC-AMR algorithm is applied to the design of sparse Type 1 linear phase FIR filters of filter orders 60, 70 and 80, and the results are compared to three state-of-the-art design methods. The reference-point-based multiobjective ABC algorithm is used to design of asymmetric lowpass, highpass, bandpass and bandstop FIR filters, and the results are compared to those obtained by the preference-based multiobjective differential evolution algorithm. The physical-programming-based multiobjective ABC algorithm is used to design IIR lowpass, highpass and bandpass filters, and the results are compared to three state-of-the-art design methods. Based on the obtained design results, the four design algorithms are shown to be competitive as compared to the state-of-the-art design methods

Designs of Digital Filters and Neural Networks using Firefly Algorithm

Firefly algorithm is an evolutionary algorithm that can be used to solve complex multi-parameter problems in less time. The algorithm was applied to design digital filters of different orders as well as to determine the parameters of complex neural network designs. Digital filters have several applications in the fields of control systems, aerospace, telecommunication, medical equipment and applications, digital appliances, audio recognition processes etc. An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is an information processing paradigm that is inspired by the way biological nervous systems, such as the brain, processes information and can be simulated using a computer to perform certain specific tasks like clustering, classification, and pattern recognition etc. The results of the designs using Firefly algorithm was compared to the state of the art algorithms and found that the digital filter designs produce results close to the Parks McClellan method which shows the algorithm’s capability of handling complex problems. Also, for the neural network designs, Firefly algorithm was able to efficiently optimize a number of parameter values. The performance of the algorithm was tested by introducing various input noise levels to the training inputs of the neural network designs and it produced the desired output with negligible error in a time-efficient manner. Overall, Firefly algorithm was found to be competitive in solving the complex design optimization problems like other popular optimization algorithms such as Differential Evolution, Particle Swarm Optimization and Genetic Algorithm. It provides a number of adjustable parameters which can be tuned according to the specified problem so that it can be applied to a number of optimization problems and is capable of producing quality results in a reasonable amount of time

Fractional - order system modeling and its applications

In order to control or operate any system in a closed-loop, it is important to know its behavior in the form of mathematical models. In the last two decades, a fractional-order model has received more attention in system identification instead of classical integer-order model transfer function. Literature shows recently that some techniques on fractional calculus and fractional-order models have been presenting valuable contributions to real-world processes and achieved better results. Such new developments have impelled research into extensions of the classical identification techniques to advanced fields of science and engineering. This article surveys the recent methods in the field and other related challenges to implement the fractional-order derivatives and miss-matching with conventional science. The comprehensive discussion on available literature would help the readers to grasp the concept of fractional-order modeling and can facilitate future investigations. One can anticipate manifesting recent advances in fractional-order modeling in this paper and unlocking more opportunities for research

Fish Swarmed Kalman Filter for State Observer Feedback of Two-Wheeled Mobile Robot Stabilization

Over the past few decades, there have been significant technological advancements in the field of robots, particularly in the area of mobile robots. The performance standards of speed, accuracy, and stability have become key indicators of progress in robotic technology. Self-balancing robots are designed to maintain an upright position without toppling over. By continuously adjusting their center of mass, they can maintain stability even when disturbed by external forces. This research aims to achieving and maintaining balance is a complex task. Self-balancing robots must accurately sense their orientation, calculate corrective actions, and execute precise movements to stay upright. Eliminating disturbances and measurement noise in self-balancing robot can enhance the accuracy of their output. One common technique for achieving this is by using Kalman filters, which are effective in addressing non-stationary linear plants with unknown input signal strengths that can be optimized through filter poles and process covariances. Additionally, advanced Kalman filter methods have been developed to account for white measurement noise. In this research, state estimation was conducted using the Fish Swarm Optimization Algorithm (FSOA) to provide feedback to the controller to overcome the effects of disturbances and noise in the measurements through the designed filter. FSOA mimics the social interactions and coordinated movements observed in fish groups to solve optimization problems. FSOA is primarily used for optimization tasks where finding the global optimal solution is desired. The results show that the use of an optimized Kalman filter with FSOA on a two-wheeled mobile robot to handle system stability reduces noise values by 38.37%, and the system reaches a steady state value of 3.8 s with a steady error of 0.2%. In addition, by using the proposed method, filtering disturbances and measurement noise in self-balancing robot can help improve the accuracy of the self balancing robot’s output. System response becomes faster towards stability compared to other methods which are also applied to two-wheeled mobile robots

Enhancing feature selection with a novel hybrid approach incorporating genetic algorithms and swarm intelligence techniques

Computing advances in data storage are leading to rapid growth in large-scale datasets. Using all features increases temporal/spatial complexity and negatively influences performance. Feature selection is a fundamental stage in data preprocessing, removing redundant and irrelevant features to minimize the number of features and enhance the performance of classification accuracy. Numerous optimization algorithms were employed to handle feature selection (FS) problems, and they outperform conventional FS techniques. However, there is no metaheuristic FS method that outperforms other optimization algorithms in many datasets. This motivated our study to incorporate the advantages of various optimization techniques to obtain a powerful technique that outperforms other methods in many datasets from different domains. In this article, a novel combined method GASI is developed using swarm intelligence (SI) based feature selection techniques and genetic algorithms (GA) that uses a multi-objective fitness function to seek the optimal subset of features. To assess the performance of the proposed approach, seven datasets have been collected from the UCI repository and exploited to test the newly established feature selection technique. The experimental results demonstrate that the suggested method GASI outperforms many powerful SI-based feature selection techniques studied. GASI obtains a better average fitness value and improves classification performance

A Comparison of Nature Inspired Algorithms for Multi-threshold Image Segmentation

In the field of image analysis, segmentation is one of the most important preprocessing steps. One way to achieve segmentation is by mean of threshold selection, where each pixel that belongs to a determined class islabeled according to the selected threshold, giving as a result pixel groups that share visual characteristics in the image. Several methods have been proposed in order to solve threshold selectionproblems; in this work, it is used the method based on the mixture of Gaussian functions to approximate the 1D histogram of a gray level image and whose parameters are calculated using three nature inspired algorithms (Particle Swarm Optimization, Artificial Bee Colony Optimization and Differential Evolution). Each Gaussian function approximates thehistogram, representing a pixel class and therefore a threshold point. Experimental results are shown, comparing in quantitative and qualitative fashion as well as the main advantages and drawbacks of each algorithm, applied to multi-threshold problem.Comment: 16 pages, this is a draft of the final version of the article sent to the Journa