Hyperparameters optimization of evolving spiking neural network using artificial bee colony for unsupervised anomaly detection

Abstract Nowadays, anomaly detection in streaming data has gained considerable attention due to the exponential growth in the data gathered by Internet of Things applications. Analyzing and processing vast data volumes requires a system capable of working in real-time. Moreover, obtaining labeled data for supervised learning is challenging, as it requires human involvement, is time-consuming, and costly. A promising direction is implementing evolving spiking neural networks (eSNN), which can be updated whenever new data becomes available without re-training previous samples. However, eSNN encounters significant challenges when it comes to manually tuning its hyperparameter values. As such, this work covers the current research gap by suggesting a novel method to optimize the hyperparameters of eSNN called online evolving spiking neural networks-artificial bee colony (OeSNN-ABC). Multiple scenarios have been utilized to evaluate the proposed method using two benchmark datasets: the Numenta anomaly benchmark (NAB) and the Yahoo Webscope using different criteria. Further validation was provided by comparing the proposed OeSNN-ABC against five well-known optimization algorithms: particle swarm optimization, grey wolf optimization, flower pollination algorithm, whale optimization algorithm, and grid search, alongside other classifiers such as random forest, support vector machine, and k-nearest neighbor. The findings revealed that OeSNN-ABC had the best performance among all compared optimization algorithms and classifiers, outperformed prior anomaly detection techniques for the NAB dataset, and achieved competitive results for the Yahoo Webscope dataset.