Broad Echo State Network with Reservoir Pruning for Nonstationary Time Series Prediction

The nonstationary time series is generated in various natural and man-made systems, of which the prediction is vital for advanced control and management. The neural networks have been explored in the time series prediction, but the problem remains in modeling the data’s nonstationary and nonlinear features. Referring to the time series feature and network property, a novel network is designed with dynamic optimization of the model structure. Firstly, the echo state network (ESN) is introduced into the broad learning system (BLS). The broad echo state network (BESN) can increase the training efficiency with the incremental learning algorithm by removing the error backpropagation. Secondly, an optimization algorithm is proposed to reduce the redundant information in the training process of BESN units. The number of neurons in BESN with a fixed step size is pruned according to the contribution degree. Finally, the improved network is applied in the different datasets. The tests in the time series of natural and man-made systems prove that the proposed network performs better on the nonstationary time series prediction than the typical methods, including the ESN, BLS, and recurrent neural network.