Distributed Extreme Learning Machine for Nonlinear Learning over Network

Distributed data collection and analysis over a network are ubiquitous, especially over a wireless sensor network (WSN). To our knowledge, the data model used in most of the distributed algorithms is linear. However, in real applications, the linearity of systems is not always guaranteed. In nonlinear cases, the single hidden layer feedforward neural network (SLFN) with radial basis function (RBF) hidden neurons has the ability to approximate any continuous functions and, thus, may be used as the nonlinear learning system. However, confined by the communication cost, using the distributed version of the conventional algorithms to train the neural network directly is usually prohibited. Fortunately, based on the theorems provided in the extreme learning machine (ELM) literature, we only need to compute the output weights of the SLFN. Computing the output weights itself is a linear learning problem, although the input-output mapping of the overall SLFN is still nonlinear. Using the distributed algorithm to cooperatively compute the output weights of the SLFN, we obtain a distributed extreme learning machine (dELM) for nonlinear learning in this paper. This dELM is applied to the regression problem and classification problem to demonstrate its effectiveness and advantages.