2008 International Conference on Computer and Electrical Engineering

Comparing BP and RBF Neural Network for Forecasting the Resident Consumer Level by MATLAB

Zhang Caiqing1 Qi Ruonan2 Qiu Zhiwen3 1, 2, 3School of Business and Management, North China Electric Power University, Baoding, 071003, China qiruonan_china@163.com

Abstract
This paper introduced BP neural network and RBF Network's basic theory, compared these two characteristics of the network structure, and applied to the resident consumer level forecasts. In RBF neural network forecasting, by changing the size of the distribution density of RBF, adjusted the forecast accuracy of the network. Compared the two neural network forecast results by MATLAB simulation. From the quantitative point proved that the RBF neural network is more efficient and accurate than BP neural network in forecasting the resident consumer level, and thus more suitable for practical application in guiding the design of neural network.

consumption level of Chinese residents reached 6,111 yuan in 2006. In order to forecast the consumption level of Chinese residents in a more adequate data analysis, the paper collected the data of gross national income, per capita income of urban residents, per capita income of rural residents and the consumer price index, associated with resident consumer level as a neural network analysis of data, so as to achieve better results.

2 BP Neural Network and RBF Neural Network

2.1 BP Neural Network Structure
BP neural network is usually based on the error back propagation (BP algorithm) to the multi-layer neural network, it is designed by D.E.Rumelhart and J.L.McCelland and its research team in 1986. Transfer function of BP neural network usually used Sigmoid that can-function, it can be achieved between the input and output arbitrary nonlinear mapping, this makes it has a more extensive application in function approximation, pattern recognition, data compression field. BP neural network is usually based on BP neurons in the multi-forward neural network structure. Typical BP network structure in following:

1 Introduction
The resident consumer level is to show people's material and cultural needs of life satisfaction, it reflects a country or a region's level of economic development and people's material and cultural living standards of the comprehensive index. According to resident consumer level, could be further calculating the average consumption volume and value of all kinds of consumer goods. Chinese people's consumption level as the economy developed rapidly growth year by year, according to China Statistical Yearbook 2007, the
978-0-7695-3504-3/08 $25.00 2008 IEEE DOI 10.1109/ICCEE.2008.35 169

Input
P

Hidden layer
a n1 b
1 1

Output layer

b1 = 0.8326 / C i i
a2=y

(3)

IW1,1

LW2, n2 b
2

At this point, the output of hidden layer neurons :

2 0.8326 (w1 ji xq ) w1 xq j i j q 0.83262 g j = exp = exp ci ci 2

21

41

31

41 1 4

31 3

41

31

The weighted sum of the hidden layer neurons output as input data for the output:
y q n = ri w 2 i i =1

a1=tansig(IW1,1+b1)

a2=purelin(LW2,1+b2)

Figure1 A single hidden layer of BP neural network

2.2 RBF Neural Network Structure

RBF network by the input layer, the hidden layer and a layer of the output before the three-tier network, to a single output of the neurons as an example, implied use of radial basis function as an incentive function, the RBF is generally Gaussian. The distance between each hidden layer neurons connected with the input of the weight w1i and the importation of vector xq, multiplied by the threshold b1i as their own input, as figure 2:

(5)

RBF network of training process in two steps: the first step to learning without teachers, determine weight w1 between input layer and hidden layer; the second step for the teachers learn to identify weight w2 between hidden layer and output layer. Before training, need to provide input vector X, target vector T and RBF expansion constant C.

3 Network design
3.1 preparations
In this paper, sorted out the data of gross national

x1q x2q xmq

r1q r2q

w21 w2q

income, per capita income of urban residents, per capita income of rural residents and the consumer price index associated with resident consumer level from 1994 to 2006. 1994-2001 data used as training samples and 2002-2006 data used as testing samples.

rnq

Figure 2 RBF neural network structure A hidden layer of the i neuronal input:
q ki = q 2 ( w 1 ji x j ) b 1i j

Year

Gross National Income

Per Capita Income of Urban Residents

(1)

1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
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48108.5 59810.5 70142.5 78060.8 83024.3 88479.2 98000.5 108068.2 119095.7 135174.0 140586.7 184739.1 211808.0

3496.2 4283.0 4838.9 5160.3 5425.1 5854.0 6280.8 6859.6 7702.8 8472.8 9421.6 10593.0 11759.5

Output:
2 2 2 q 1 q i ri = expkq = exp (w jixq) b1 = exp( wix b1) 2 1 j i i j

RBF threshold b1 can adjust the sensitivity function, however, in the actual work another parameter C (expansion constant) used more commonly. There are a number of established methods determine the relationship between C and b1, neural networks in Matlab Toolbox, the relationship between C and b1:

Per Capita Income of Rural Residents 1221.0 1577.7 1926.1 2090.1 2162.0 2210.3 2253.4 2366.4 2475.6 3622.2 2936.4 3254.9 3580.7
Table 1

Consumer Price Index

Resident Consumer Level 1833 2355 2789 3002 3159 3346 3632 3869 4106 4411 4925 5463 6111

1998 1999 2000 2001

0.5823 0.6733 0.8321 1.0000

0.5735 0.7010 0.8279 1.0000

124.2 117.1 108.3 102.8 99.2 98.6 100.4 100.7 99.2 101.2 103.9 101.8 101.4

SPREAD is the distribution density of RBF, first spread from 2.5 to network training, MATLAB code as following:

The network established during the training process, therefore, net network is already trained.

3.3 network test

Network as following: test is network simulation and verification of its ability to forecast. MATLAB code

forecast data source

3.2 network creation and training

The number input of RBF network neurons depend on the factors that can impact the resident consumer level, from table 1, their number to 4. Output value is the resident consumer level, so the output is 1. Newrbe used to create a precise function of neural networks, which can automatically choose the number of hidden layer, making forecasts more accurate. It must be data normalized before used for training and testing. p as input vector and t as the goal vector, which can be drawn from Table 1. MATLAB code as following:

p_test is the test samples from Table 1 afer 2002-2006 data normalization. Running the process results:

After

the

anti-normalization

treatment,

the

forecast results: 4014.8 4306.3 5247.7 5447.1 6147.7 compared with the actual results, due to the limited sample data and forecasts of the greater, the error in the acceptable range. In addition, SPREAD value of the network size affect the accuracy of forecasts, were taken SPREAD = 2.3, 2.7 circumstances computing network of forecast accuracy. After the result anti-normalization, compared with the forecast results, you can find makes the network more accurate precision SPREAD value. In order to compare with the forecast data of RBF network, design BP network in the MATLAB environment, enter same input, and create a network as follows to predict:

Table 2 training sample after data normalization

Year

Gross National Income

Per Capita Income of Urban Residents

1994 1995 1996 1997

0.0000 0.1950 0.3675 0.4995

0.0000 0.2339 0.3992 0.4948

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resident consumer level, and thus more suitable for practical application in guiding the design of neural networks. The results of several comparative figures as following:

5.References
[1]China Statistical Yearbook 2007 [2] GE philosophy, Sun Zhiqiang, Neural network theory and MATLABR 2007. Electronics Industry Publishing House. 2007 [3] Dong Changhong. Neural network and application[M ]. Beijing: National Defence Industry Press.2005 [4] Neural Network Toolbox.MathWork.2007 [5] Yang Wei, Wang Ende, Chang Chen. Application BP neural network forecasting urban water demand [J], Resources and Environment, vol24, No3 2003. [6] XU F,LU JG, SUN Y X. Application of neural network

-0=spread2.5 -*= spread2.3 -+= spread2.7 *=y_bp; Figure 3: BP and RBF forecast error compared

in image processing[J]. Information and Control .2003, 32(4): 345-348. [7] WEN X, ZHOU L, LIX, et a.l Simulation and application of neural network for MATLAB [M ]. Beijing: Science Press,.2003. [8] HippertH S, Bunn DW, Souza R C. Large neural net-works for electricity load forecasting: are they overfitted [J]. International Journal of Forecasting .2005, 21(3): 425-434. [9] GhiassiM, SaidaneH, Zimbra D K. A dynamic artificial neural network model for forecasting time series e-vents [J]. International Journal of Forecasting.2005,21(2): 341-362.

4.Conclusion
These results can be seen that the smallest network error in SPREAD value from 2.5, the results and the actual value of the closest. The forecast error of resident consumer level expressed by "*" in BP network. Comprehensive comparison found that RBF network is better than BP network in prediction accuracy, training time and training speed. It proved that the RBF neural network is more efficient and accurate than BP neural network in forecasting the

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