Does a Fractional-Order Recurrent Neural Network Improve the Identification of Chaotic Dynamics?

This paper presents a quantitative study of the effects of using arbitrary-order operators in Neural Networks. It is based on a Recurrent Wavelet First-Order Neural Network (RWFONN), which can accurately identify several chaotic systems (measured by the mean square error and the coefficient of determination, also known as R-Squared, r2) under a fixed parameter scheme in the neural algorithm. Using fractional operators, we analyze whether the identification capabilities of the RWFONN are improved, and whether it can identify signals from fractional-order chaotic systems. The results presented in this paper show that using a fractional-order Neural Network does not bring significant advantages in the identification process, compared to an integer-order RWFONN. Nevertheless, the neural algorithm (modeled with an integer-order derivative) proved capable of identifying fractional-order dynamical systems, whose behavior ranges from periodic and multi-stable to chaotic oscillations. That is, the performances of the Neural Network model with an integer-order derivative and the fractional-order network are practically identical, making the use of fractional-order RWFONN-type networks meaningless. The results deepen the work previously published by the authors, and contribute to developing structures based on robust and generic neural algorithms to identify more than one chaotic oscillator without retraining the Neural Network.