Innovative Second-Generation Wavelets Construction With Recurrent Neural Networks for Solar Radiation Forecasting

Solar radiation prediction is an important challenge for the electrical engineer because it is used to estimate the power developed by commercial photovoltaic modules. This paper deals with the problem of solar radiation prediction based on observed meteorological data. A 2-day forecast is obtained by using novel wavelet recurrent neural networks (WRNNs). In fact, these WRNNS are used to exploit the correlation between solar radiation and timescale-related variations of wind speed, humidity, and temperature. The input to the selected WRNN is provided by timescale-related bands of wavelet coefficients obtained from meteorological time series. The experimental setup available at the University of Catania, Italy, provided this information. The novelty of this approach is that the proposed WRNN performs the prediction in the wavelet domain and, in addition, also performs the inverse wavelet transform, giving the predicted signal as output. The obtained simulation results show a very low root-mean-square error compared to the results of the solar radiation prediction approaches obtained by hybrid neural networks reported in the recent literature

Wavelet Lifting over Information-Based EEG Graphs for Motor Imagery Data Classification

The imagination of limb movements offers an intuitive paradigm for the control of electronic devices via brain computer interfacing (BCI). The analysis of electroencephalographic (EEG) data related to motor imagery potentials has proved to be a difficult task. EEG readings are noisy, and the elicited patterns occur in different parts of the scalp, at different instants and at different frequencies. Wavelet transform has been widely used in the BCI field as it offers temporal and spectral capabilities, although it lacks spatial information. In this study we propose a tailored second generation wavelet to extract features from these three domains. This transform is applied over a graph representation of motor imaginary trials, which encodes temporal and spatial information. This graph is enhanced using per-subject knowledge in order to optimise the spatial relationships among the electrodes, and to improve the filter design. This method improves the performance of classifying different imaginary limb movements maintaining the low computational resources required by the lifting transform over graphs. By using an online dataset we were able to positively assess the feasibility of using the novel method in an online BCI context